Sex was far from simple in 16th century England. Shakespeare himself wed a woman eight years his senior, a departure from the typical ages of both partners. While some of his characters follow the common conventions of Elizabethan culture (male courtship and the "transfer" of a woman from the care of her father to her husband), others show marked indifference toward appropriate gender roles and sexuality.
The post Shakespeare and sex in the 16th century [infographic] appeared first on OUPblog.
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I have posted this poem before, on a
quite special occasion since which my Beloved and I have tied the knot yet again in the state of Maryland. And those pieces of paper we got officializing our marriage are pretty important for many social and political and financial and legal reasons.
But this string of words--that's all they are, which is the miracle--expresses a connection which must touch the inside, human place in everyone who has loved. Now let that "
hollow muscular organ that is the center of the circulatory system" fill up and become your Heart.[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
....................................i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
~ e.e. cummings
The heart of Poetry Friday will no doubt overflow with love this Valentine's Friday at
Merely Day by Day with Cathy.
Slowly catching up. Posted below are my five daily poems from April 20 through April 24. I'm already imagining the editing process on these poems. But for the time being, they will have to do. Consider them simply ideas captured---place holders awaiting final revision. Sometimes that's as good as it gets.
April 20—Write a message in a bottle poem. Imagine your poem is being rolled up and put in a bottle for someone to find and read.
To Whom It May Concern
By Bill Kirk
Hello out there—anyone.
This is my last recently emptied bottle.
I’ve been here a while—waiting.
The days I’ve counted number 173.
But I can’t be certain
I haven’t missed one or two.
Please hurry—well, at least
Get here as soon as you can.
I used to think everyone
Ought to have a chance
To be alone—solitary.
You know, to spend some quality time
Getting in touch with one’s self.
Been there. Done that.
No—Am here. Doing that.
Guess I can take that
Off my bucket list, right ahead of
“GET RESCUED.”
Please hurry—well, at least
Get here as soon as you can.
April 21—Write a second thoughts poem. You could have second thoughts about something you’ve done or thought in the past. You could write something about someone (or something else) having second thoughts. Or you could even take a poem you wrote earlier in the month and flip it in a new direction.
On Second Thought
By Bill Kirk
Second thoughts have pros and cons;
They have their goods and bads.
A second thought can save the day
Or turn your glads to sads.
Second thoughts for some are weak.
They say we hesitate—
As if allowing time to think
Suggests we’ll be too late.
Others say the best approach
Is leaving ample space,
For second thoughts to bounce around
And win the thinking race.
Just remember, if in doubt,
It’s wise to heed the id.
Its best advice? “On second thought,
Let’s not and say we did!”
April 22—Today is Good Friday and Earth Day. Write an “only one in the world” poem. This only one in the world might be a person, an animal, a place or an object. Think of someone or something else and write.
Earth As An “Only One”
By Bill Kirk
Granted, what I know
Has its limitations.
But wouldn’t you have to agree,
Earth in its unitary form is, indeed,
The only one of its kind in the world,
And that earth and the conditions
That make it possible,
Are universally singular?
In fact, how can it be any other way?
For nothing can be exactly
And precisely duplicated,
On earth or elsewhere.
So, everything
On the earth,
In the earth,
Of the earth and
Beyond the earth is
Totally,
Inexorably,
Unquestionably
Unique.
The End.
April 23—Write a quit doing what you’re doing poem. This could be about something you need to quit doing or that someone or something should quit doing.
Ode To Inertia
By Bill Kirk
Inertia is a funny thing,
Whether a body’s
At rest or in motion.
If inertia comes into play,
By its very nature,
It always involves
The quitting of some particular thing.
For example, overcoming
The inertia of running
Means you will slow down
And maybe stop.
Taking a nap? Time to
Wake up and move,
And so forth and so on….
Figurative inertia gets even better.
Movement, or lack of movement, notwithstanding,
That meal you are eating or
That game you are playing or
That dissertation you are writing or
That job you would just as soon not be doing
Will hopefully, eventually, end�
In honor of Saint Patrick's Day, here's a jaunty little rhyme for March. I was once told in a very nice rejection letter that a serious math journal wouldn't publish such doggerel. But that's all right. It was fun to write. Enjoy.
"Numbers Rap"
by Bill Kirk
Numbers, Numbers, all around us.
Numbers, numbers, they astound us!
Integers can be quite mental;
Fractions, never transcendental.
Counting numbers may well taunt you.
But ignore them and they'll haunt you!
Adding them to do your sums,
May take fingers, toes and thumbs.
If subtraction is your game,
Minus signs, you'll need to tame.
Try division if you're able.
Multiply? You'll need a table.
Odd times odd is odd, not even.
Odd times even's "even Steven."
Do your tens to reach a million;
Times a thousand is a billion!
When you're counting, don't be frugal.
Who knows? You might reach a googol!
Learning numbers is a quest.
To succeed, just do your best.
Michael Sedano
Love…
…is wasted on the young
…is never having to say you’re sorry
…is a many-splendoured thing
…peace happiness
…for sale
…is in the air this time of year. With St. Valentine’s Day just around the corner, La Bloga’s On-Line Floricanto this week features love poems.
Can one ever have enough love, or enough love poems? I hold on to my all-time choices for best love poems that include
Yeats and Ina Cumpiano. Today, Francisco Alarcón and moderators of the Facebook poetry site,
Poets Responding to SB 1070, advance thirteen poems we hope enhance your Valentine enjoyment.
1. "Attended Only by the Crescent Moon" by Hedy Treviño
2. "I Love Love" by Savannah Treviño Casias
3. "100 Words Over How I Don't Bear A Grudge For the Heart" by Lorna Dee Cervantes
4. "Of Water and Salt" by Odilia Galván Rodríguez
5. "For My Love on Our 40th Anniversary" by Elena Díaz Björkquist
6. "Thursday" by Andrea Hernandez Holm
7. "Homenaje a La Mujer Araña" por Abel Salas
8. "Dialectics of Love / Dialética del amor" by Francisco X. Alarcón
9. "Pray For Heartbreak" by Meg Withers
10. "Algo de ti / Something about You" by Avotcja Jiltonilro
11. "There's Another Wall in the World" by ElizaBeth Benson
12."Bride With an Hourglass" by Victor Avila
13. "Regalo de luna" por Margarita Robleda
Attended Only by the Crescent Moon
by Hedy Garcia Treviño
I rose upon the hill that day
to find my heart asunder
Your love remains upon my lips
and whispers when I slumber
I see your face in passing clouds
there where mountains meet the sky
Attended by a single star
I barred the windows to my heart
I found my way through darkened clouds
and winter knew my name
I rode for decades through the fog
attended only by the moon
I climbed upon the folded wings
of angels in despair
At last redeemed by falling stars
past the fog I found the door
Returned I was to the land of the elders
the shadow offered to the sky
And in the embers of redemption
I found the strength to fly
H. Garcia Treviño
I Love Love
by Savannah Treviño-Casias
Love is a wonderful thing
It makes me want to sing
Smile and be happy
Love is something everyone has inside
Love has always existed
Love will go on forever
In our minds, in our souls, our lives, and in our hearts
until the end of time.
I love love, it is a part of who I am.
I am a loving person.
I love all my family, friends, pets, and this wonderful life I have.
This world we all live in can sure use some more love.
Let us the people of the world love ourselves and each other.
Love is power
A power that can change the world for the better.
And we the people should take the power of love and lead the world out of the shadows
and into the light that will
By:
Bill Kirk,
on 4/13/2010
Blog:
billkirkwrites
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April 12: “For today's prompt, pick a city, make that the title of your poem, and write a poem. Your poem can praise or belittle the city. Your poem could be about the city or about the people of the city. Your poem could even have seemingly nothing to do with the city. But the simple act of picking a city will set the mood (to a certain degree), so choose wisely.”
La Paz
By Bill Kirk
We once had a house
On Calle Nueve, across the street
From the President of Bolivia.
It’s not every day a kid
Gets to have tea with the First Lady
Or ride on a motorcycle,
Holding on for dear life,
Behind the Captain
Of the Presidential Guard.
Or watch a hundred native dancers in full costume
March through your front gate
To set up a brief rest stop
In the backyard of your house.
My sister and I heard the drums
And horns and flutes
Way down at the end of our street,
Even before we could see the parade.
When the procession turned the corner,
I just knew they would come to our house.
Yet I still couldn’t quite believe it when they did.
Even dad was surprised when he got home.
Mom said they were on their way
To a three-day fiesta in Las Yungas.
Why anyone would want to have
A party in the jungle, I’ll never know.
But they seemed to be having fun.
Then there was the time someone
Gave us a honey bear for a pet.
Of course, we couldn’t keep it.
After all, a honey bear needs to be free.
The river at the end of our street
Raged one year during the rainy season
And washed away the little mud brick shack
Where Mamasita and Papasito lived—
It was the year I was home schooled
To get me ready for fourth grade in the States.
My mom even gave me recess
So I could watch the flood happen.
Two little sheep fell into the water that day
And it took them away,
Never to be seen again.
That was a sad day on our street.
Even the President noticed.
The air is rather thin at 12,000 feet
Which is why fire departments
Hardly ever get any business that high up.
And there’s no such thing
As a two-minute boiled egg—that is,
Unless you like it raw.
Maybe the thin air is why
My memories seem so clear
From once upon a time in La Paz.
April 13: “Two for Tuesday time! Here are today's two prompts:
1. Write a love poem.
2. Write an anti-love poem.”
Given a choice, I’ll take the former. I just can’t seem to get my head into anti-love---maybe if someone has a broken heart, that’s the place they would be.
Spring Is Made For Love
By Bill Kirk
If timing’s your reason
To give love a fling,
The very best season
Has got to be spring.
The summer is super
To heat up your game.
But sunburn and heat waves
Can cool down your flame.
And festive fall fashion
May seem quite the deal.
But hitting the sales
May de-zest your zeal.
A deep chill in winter
Can beg for a spark
But all of those layers
Keep love in the dark.
Although every season
Has lots of potential,
To even your odds,
It’s spring that’s essential.
For M
It's about peace in the body.
The little miracle of how we undo each other as we make love.
And undone, we let go for a sliver of time
the days of disappointment.
Burdens and betrayals knotting nerve and sinew and bone
dissolve in the O of our mouths.
Arms around each other.
Circle of skin.
We breathe together,
simple and clear.
Stillness in your smile, my smile.
Stillness and then laughter.
Prayer
I need to lie on cool, wet ground;
so the earth can sing to me.
If I am small, and still,
the grass will chant its secrets.
I feel hollow and lost.
I need green to fill me, to feed me.
I am sick of the taste of compromise;
of work for money only.
I am empty from worry
and my fear of losing you.
I need the touch of bark,
and the arms of trees.
I need to climb to fruit and flowers,
and trust I will not fall.
My prayer books
are crumbled and dry.
No church will hold me.
I look to ritual,
unadorned and simple.
I ask the Woman who is everywhere,
Heal me.
Lisa Alvarado
Below is another reflection on the life of a publicist from Michelle Rafferty. Rafferty has been a Publicity Assistant at Oxford University Press since September 2008. Prior to Oxford she interned at Norton Publishing for a summer and taught 9th & 10th grade Literature. She is chronicling her adventures in publishing every Friday so be sure to visit again next week.
Not long ago a friend and I discussed the art of a really good romantic e-mail exchange—one with just the right mix of cultural allusion, flirtation and wit. While e-mail has killed the suspense of the old fashioned epistolary exchange, it is not nearly lamentable as the rapid fire (and often lazy) text message. Although the love letter has been reduced to 160 characters, it still stands as an imperative in modern day courtship.So, how do you think you would survive in a time when romantic exchanges were made through handwritten letters and sonnets? That was the question I pondered while reading Edna St. Vincent Millay’s biography What Lips My Lips Have Kissed: The Loves and Love Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay. In 1999 Daniel Mark Epstein was one of only two biographers granted access to the poet’s diary entries and the letters she exchanged with her many lovers and family, up until her death in 1950. There was so much overlap in her poetry, letters, and love live, that he was able to piece together her life story, which I tore through like a salacious romance novel; her reputation as the “sex goddess of Greenwich Village” was well deserved.
Millay was always involved in at least one or more affairs, and over the course of her life she exchanged hundreds upon hundreds of fervent love letters and poetry with men and women alike. Many fell in love with her based on her poetry alone. Before ever meeting Millay the Latin American poet Salomon de la Selva wrote to her:
I love you, ugly or beautiful. But if you are beautiful you will always be a thing apart from me, somehow, like a lovely music. But if you are ugly, I will take your face in my hands and kiss you very deeply, until your face pales and glows like a star and I feel how nothing that God made is ugly, and then you shall be beautiful with the beauty of a dream that I bear in my heart.
Millay’s longest love affair was with poet Arthur Ficke; despite the fact that they were probably intimate only one or two times, their relationship spanned over three decades. It began with the exchange of letters, in which Ficke offered Millay “avuncular literary advice and criticism of her poems. He sent her his books of verse; he mailed her a volume of Blake, whom she had never read.” The married Ficke put on a “gallant” show of resistance in response to her flirtatious letters, even clipping out inappropriate passages, but this did not stop their exchanges. When they met in person six years later, it was “love at first sight,” but then Ficke was shipped to war, where he wrote her a number of sonnets which prompted her to write the greatest sonnets of her book Second April. Throughout their respective marriages to other people, the two remained close, and the relationship ended just as it began: with an exchange of letters. As Ficke lay on his death bed in 1949, he wrote to Millay: “I like to think that your and my very strange, very fluctuant, profound love for each other has, in all these many years, been evocative of the very finest things in each of us, many a time.” At his funeral she read the famous sonnet “And you as well must die, beloved dust,” which she wrote for Ficke 30 years prior.
As I pored over the loves and love poems of Millay, I found myself touched, even brought to tears, but also wondering if such an emotional correspondence is possible via email. A computer screen can’t substitute for the personality of a hand written letter (smell, remnants of the writers lunch, idiosyncratic penmanship, origami), and prose becomes a little less magical when a delete button is involved—you can feel the passion and sweat infused in a really good love letter that has been outlined and drafted 3-4 times. The perfect e-mail does exist, but I believe its effect will always be less than that of a hand written letter.
Then again, I could be wrong. Maybe one day a biographer will scour through your text messages, e-mails, and facebook account, admiring the perfect balance of wit and compassion you strike in 30-second-response-time on your QWERTY keyboard, or your ability to transpose pop culture references, song lyrics, hyperlinks, and digital photos in all the right places. You might be a modern Millay.
possibly one of the most power packed group of poems i have ever read!!! SIMPLY LOVABLE!