Poetry day! D.H. Lawrence

A few days ago, in one of my classes, we went to the archives and looked at some of the stuff from the Lawrence collection. The archivist had brought out for us a kind of series of the development of this one poem, from the early notebooks to the final (in his lifetime) published version. There are essentially three versions of this poem: the first is called "Last Words to Muriel" and the final two are "Last Words to Miriam." It is an overwhelmingly sexual poem, so if you're uncomfortable with me talking about sex, stop reading now. You have been warned.

The way I read it, the poem tells the story of the speaker's first time with Muriel/Miriam, who is a virgin. It does not go well, and the speaker feels...bad about it? At least, that's the impression I get from the first two versions. Some of it I genuinely don't understand - some of it may be punctuation errors - but I can't quite parse it. However, some of it I do get, and it's kind of disturbing. There's a distinct change in perspective between the first two versions and the last, and it bothers me.

In the first two versions, the speaker is the seducer. He recognizes his role in the events, acknowledges it, and accepts it. It is a little bit Pygmalion-esque, to be sure [Mine was the love of the sun for a flower / He creates with his shine. / I was diligent to explore you / Blossom you stalk by stalk] but he's the speaker, he's allowed to be a little bit selfish. At least he's consistent with it: he is definitely the initiator in this version.

But then the last version turns all that around. Instead of the speaker being the sun, now she is. [Mine was the love of a growing flower / For the sunshine. / You had the power to explore me, / Blossom me stalk by stalk] Miriam is now the seducer, the one with the power and control. The poor innocent poet is as helpless as a flower responding to the sunshine.

This makes the next bit a little bit odd:

You yielded, we threw the last cast,
And it was no good.

You only endured, and it broke
My craftsman's nerve.

Question 1: If she is the seducer, why is she the one yielding? Why is she only enduring? If she's the seducer, isn't this what she wants? Isn't she the one taking charge? Do I have the definition of seducer wrong?
Question 2: If she is the seducer and he is just a flower responding to the sunshine, where did he develop this craftsman's nerve? And isn't that a little bit overconfident in his abilities? (As we shall see further on in the poem...)

And then, the word that is the bane of my existence. Granted, I am overly sensitive to this word because of past experiences. But be that as it may, this is where he completely loses my sympathy:

No flesh responded to my stroke;
So I failed to give you the last
Fine torture you did deserve.

"So" is a causal conjunction. It signals a cause-effect relationship between the clauses that it is joining. This happened, so that happened. This caused that. There is no other reading when you use "so." If you want to imply mutual fault, use "and." By using "so," the speaker is blatantly blaming the girl's unresponsiveness for his failure. First he blames her for seducing him, then he implies that he has to do all the work, and then he blames her for his failure.

Don't use the word "so". I'm just saying.

The next-to-last stanza is also troubling to me.

Since the fire has failed in me,
What man will stoop in your flesh to plough
The shrieking cross?

Let's ignore the vulgarity of "to plough the shrieking cross" and focus instead on the insufferable smugness of the opening clause. It reads to me like "who's going to want you now?" Like he's the best lover she could ever hope for, so if he failed no one else even has a chance. (That is a correct use of the word "so.") That's right, ladies, what Lawrence is telling you here is that, if your first time doesn't go well, you are doomed to a life of pain and celibacy. You couldn't come with him, so you will never have sex again. And, by the way, it's your fault, you frigid seductress.

I'm so disappointed in Lawrence with this poem. I stick up for him a lot - of the "big three" of the modernists (Joyce and Woolf being the others) I like him the best, and I will defend Lady Chatterley's Lover to anyone, but the third version of this poem seems so misogynistic and wrong - worse even than Sons and Lovers, which also disturbed me. I definitely liked the second version of it better. Someone in class commented on the move to "aesthetic perfection" with this poem, implying that the third version is more beautiful than the first two, but for me, if it doesn't have emotional consistency as well, then it fails. And the third version just doesn't have emotional consistency. Fail, Lawrence.

American football

Football is one of my joys in life. I have a lot of friends, mostly back in the States, who do not understand football and who especially do not understand the joy I get out of football. They see it as a vulgar game, incomprehensible, filled with big guys running into each other. And they're right – football, American football, can be incomprehensible, filled with big guys running into each other and stupid twenty-somethings running off their mouths. But to me, football is so much more than that.

I try to describe football to people as a chess game. Each play is like a mini chess game. The analogy doesn't really hold up that well, but bear with me. Each piece on the board – each player – can move in a certain way, and not in others. The offensive linemen can only go so far, the defensive backs can only go certain places. Each player has their role and if they overstep that role, they are penalized. The movement of the players appears chaotic and random, but looked at closely (and done well) it's very choreographed and well-organized.

Football is also about emotion for me. It's about spending every Friday and Saturday dressed in red, watching the Tanagers, the 'Yotes, or the Huskers (on TV). It's about celebrating when my brother makes a beautiful pass that's beautifully caught in the end zone. (And then about hearing his story about having to go and celebrate in the end zone by himself....) It's about the Domino's pizza arriving before Peter did on a Monday night. It's about the history of the game – recognizing the names of the announcers and the coaches because you watched them play, or because Dad tells stories about watching them play. It's about seeing former players at Homecoming games – or non-Homecoming games – and reminiscing. It's the smell of home-baked cookies on Sunday afternoon and the sight of the boys filling up our kitchen and living room eating them all before taking the remnants home to their roommates.

I miss football.

Being at home

I have been thinking about writing a book based on my experiences in Slovakia, and an exploration of what makes a place “home”. There are a lot of trite things written about it, most notably the phrase “home is where the heart is” but I think there's more to it than that. In my book, I'm going to attempt to trace the three – maybe four – different threads that can make you feel at home.

The first thing is being around people that you enjoy. This doesn't have to be family, per se; in fact, for many people I know, being around their family is a hindrance to happiness. But if you have a good social group, things are a lot easier. I have been in a situation where every other aspect of “home” is right, but I don't have a good social group. It killed the place for me, to the point where I'm still not comfortable going back.

The second thing is being in a place that you enjoy. Some people are at their best in cities with good shopping; others in a place with a lot of history; others in smaller towns where they can get to know their neighbors. However, if you're in a place where you can't even stand leaving your house, you're probably in the wrong place.

The third thing is doing something that you enjoy. If you have a job that you loathe, you're not going to enjoy your life. If you have a job that you love, you will. It maybe shouldn't be quite that simple, but it is.

The fourth thing, and the one that probably isn't as important as the others – after all, I have never had it and yet I have been at home in several places – is the presence of love. It probably plays in to the first thing – being around people you enjoy – but it deserves a separate point anyway. It is sort of like the crowning jewel of home – being in a happy, stable relationship on top of everything else will make a place perfect.

I have been very lucky in my life, to have had homes many different places. I have had four different places where I have lived that I have had the first three points. I have lived with people I liked, in a place that I liked, doing things that I liked. I'm doing it again now, in fact. But I have found that if I'm missing any one of those three parts, I'm not at home.

Now that I'm back in an academic frame of mind, I've got posts percolating about canonicity, manuscript transmission, Pentecost and worship styles, what it means to be "home," and philosophical critiques of reason. I may also do some more poetry days. However, schoolwork comes first, my social life comes second, and this blog is third.