Version #1 was somewhat pathetic, but Dick liked it (well, he was here as the action played out last night) - PLUS, he thinks poetry must rhyme (collective groan from all English majors allowed). So, I'm not a poet, and am open to massive revision ideas.
Society of English Majors’ Lament
Society of English Majors’ Lament
By Marilyn Jaeger
Daughter Anne and I chatted on the phone at two,
We agreed that English majors have a calling too.
They know the lore, they mind the literature,
And hanging up, I felt pretty snug and sure.
Women’s club was due to meet up here by six,
They brought pot luck; I just had snacks to fix.
A dozen came laughing, with wine first on the plan.
Oh! Kriss brought
a friend, a one-pound newborn lamb!
“A triplet, the mother pushed her away from life,
Bit off her tail – see! – almost clean as a knife.
I call her Bernice, as in ‘Bernice Bobs Her Hair’”
(That’s F. Scott Fitzgerald’s
tale of a girl from Eau Claire.)
Berenice,
my mom, I love her to my core.
This
Bernice story? Never heard of it before!
All here is empathetic, the beauty of a family blog. And by 'family', I'll extend to anyone who has a Midwestern sense of the world--a weltenschauung, so to speak--to consider the renaissance spirit that connects Fitzgerald to Keillor to Elstad-Vold-Lamken-Jaeger. Indeed we are in that mix.
ReplyDeleteFitzgerald is perhaps one of the 15 reasons I became a literature teacher. 'Berenice Bobs her Hair' complemented my favorite short story of all time, 'Babylon Revisited', and the Minnesota connection (looking east, as if Ivy League sheen would fulfill some 'second city' lacuna) made impacts on aesthetic, thematic, cultural levels. Whether it was the "semicruel world of adolescence", the dichotomy of "position" against "pulchritude" (whatever the Spanish insinuated), the "depravity" that goes into events big and small (enter Dostoevsky)...this story is great, and your sonnet adds to its effect. I also like--a la 'Lost Menagerie'--a lost lamb for our Pentecostal considerations!
We're in what I termed to Jon's 'Thirty Birds' a few years ago a 'purple patch' of productivity. Sonnets like this add to the memoirs of midwestern chronicles, the aesthetic exegeses of gospels (especially of St Luke), the short stories we're actualizing--my 'Preying on Malchus' is taking shape--and the travels of the generation that most matters now: Kirsten's journey to our fair nucleus in Europe, and Josef's recent return from England, including a memorable stop-over in Canterbury. Indeed, Chaucer's Prologue is also among my 15 reasons for becoming a literature teacher. Dee Johnson, in 11th grade, assigned us to write our own prologues as a way in to Chaucer's project. Gosh, what an assignment, beyond any curriculum or grade! I assume I got an A; don't care if I got a C--what an assignment! Dee Johnson is also one of my 15 reasons, but that's a different story!
And that is the point of Stillwater Symposia (nicely the Latin encourages the plural)--keep posting here, and replying in kind. 'Berenice Bobs Her Hair' speaks beyond our replies, but begs our adherence at every turn.
As does this subtle season between Easter and Pentecost, my increasingly favorite, less-doubting Thomas et al...