Monday, September 8, 2008

Working through Boland blogs

I'm starting to do my research for my thesis, and am finding all kinds of interesting blogs about Eavan Boland. Here are two:

Exphrasis: Poetry Inspired by Art and Song of a Reformed Headhunter (Jee Leong Koh) -- the later in particular discusses three poems I've been researching, one about a Degas painting, one about a Renoir painting, and one about an Ingres drawing. Since I'm lazy, I will not post the photos of these artworks, nor reproduce the poems. If you're interested, follow the links. Oh, what the heck, here's the Ingres. I like her clear face, her beautiful skin, her neck, her firmness -- wrapped all up in hasty sketches and ruffles -- a woman in a potato chip.

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Long August

It was a great and grim month -- I have a new job, still trying to separate from my old job, my kid's sick (really not nice), the weather has been a disaster, the DNC and then the RNC took up a lot ot time, Sarah Palin gives me the creeps but my husband thinks she's attractive, I'm going to have to give away the tortoise because we really don't have enough space for him -- but on the up side, my sister-in-law is now a thyroid cancer survivor (yeah!), my best friend has her breast tumor downgraded and may not need chemo (double yea!), my son caught his first fish (yum!) and I think I've decided at last what to do with my thesis -- yes, this is a poetry post to this, my poetry blog -- Domestic Imagery in Eavan Boland's Poetry: Aesthetic or Femenist Choices? -- or something like that.

What do you think about this? (from "Suburban Woman" published in The War Horse, 1975)

II

Morning: mistress of talcums, spun
and second cottons, run tights
she is, courtesan to the lethal
rapine of routine. The room invites.
She reaches to flouresce the dawn.
The kitchen lights like a brothel.

Pretty cool, huh? Stay tuned --