Poems Speak to Us...If We Listen

If you're lucky, you'll read a line in a poem and know it is speaking directly to you. That's how I felt when I read these lines at the end of Linda Pastan's poem "Women on the Shore":

If death is everywhere we look,
at least let's marry it to beauty.

This could be the manifesto of why I write poetry. Read the whole poem here.

My Fair Lady - See for Yourself

The end of "I could have danced all night" as well as the beginning of the Ascot scene.

My Fair Lady

Last week I caught the last half of My Fair Lady (1964 version) on television. I've already noted that I love musicals (though strangely not the new ones), and My Fair Lady ranks right at the top. While it doesn't have dancing, which is one of the elements I adore about musicals, it does have Audrey Hepburn, with whom I've been enamored for years. And though there are no elaborate dance scenes, it is one of the most stylistic and carefully choreographed musicals I can think of, from how the characters stand to how they move through a scene to how they interact with one another. The Ascot scene in particular stands out in my mind as a feast for the eyes.

One thing that has troubled me over the years is how I can love the movie when the story makes me a little uncomfortable. The musical is based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, which in turn was inspired by Ovid's Metamorphosis. Wikipedia gives this plot summary for the movie:

Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison), an arrogant, irascible professor of phonetics, boasts to a new acquaintance, Colonel Pickering (Wilfrid Hyde-White), that he can teach any woman to speak so "properly" that he could pass her off as a duchess. The person whom he is shown thus teaching is one Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn), a young woman with a strong Cockney accent who is selling flowers on the street. Having overheard Higgins's boast, Eliza finds her way to the professor's house and offers to pay for speech lessons, so that she can work in a flower shop. Pickering is intrigued and wagers that Higgins cannot back up his claim; Higgins takes Eliza on free of charge as a challenge to his skills.

My feminist perspective makes me feel a little guilty for loving this movie. Take, for example, the song "A Hymn to Him," in which Henry Higgins sings to Colonel Pickering, "Why can't a woman be more like a man?" I have conflicting feelings about the ending as well, when Eliza returns to Henry (I make the assumption that she stays), though we know he'll never change. What heartens me is that Eliza is as hard-headed as Henry, so I feel she'll give right back what she takes. Also, I sort of like that it's not the ending in the play. In Pygmalion, Eliza marries Freddy, the young, eager man who falls in love with Eliza, though she doesn't feel the same way. While this is a more realistic ending, it has its own lamentable implications, specifically that Eliza marries out of necessity and lack of choice (and choice, in my opinion, is at the heart of feminism). As Eliza tells Henry, "I sold flowers. I didn't sell myself. Now you've made a lady of me, I'm not fit to sell anything else." As much as the story brings up issues of women's equality, it also takes on class issues--how language and accent contribute to the distinction of classes.

Maybe that's why I love this musical so much...because it challenges me. At the same time it delights me with its sights and sounds. I could have danced all night.

Garden Revisited

The magnolia and catalpa of two weeks ago.

What Accent?

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Inland North You may think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like "Are you from Wisconsin?" or "Are you from Chicago?" Chances are you call carbonated drinks "pop."
The Midland
The Northeast
Philadelphia
The South
North Central
The West
Boston
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

This is extremely funny to me. My husband and I are convinced we speak standard English without an accent. But folks can often pin us to the Midwest, sometimes even to Wisconsin. My husband insists this is because standard English is what's spoken in southern Wisconsin. Still, we probably speak some "Wisconsinisms" that reveal our heritage. My favorite is bubbler, which sadly hasn't slipped out of my mouth in years. Now I tend to favor the more widely accepted water fountain.

List Poems

Following up on an earlier post, here is a list poem I found on Poets.org.

And I can't talk about list poems without referring to Whitman. At the Poetry Foundation, you can read Song of Myself. Among the cadence of the poem are lists, varied and beautiful.

In Memoriam

Cyd Charisse, dancing star of such musicals as "Brigadoon" and "The Band Wagon," died yesterday.

I have fond memories of watching these musicals and others with my Dad in high school. Never mind the often silly, redundant plots and poor segues from talking to singing and dancing; the best musicals lightened my heart.

On a side note, seniors at my high school could get parking spots with short names spray painted over the spot (yes, I went to a pretentious high school, sometimes dubbed Gucci High). My spot said Cyd.

Here's a clip from "The Band Wagon."