Poem(s) o'the Day: Yeats, "Leda and the Swan"; Sexton, "Housewife"

Two short poems today--and one ISN'T ANNE SEXTON??? Nah, it's my favorite W.B.Yeats poem. The Sexton one is one I used to think as a bit of a throwaway, but have since recanted. By the way-is this a good idea? Is anyone reading? Frankly, I guess I'll continue posting either way, but of course, I'm totally paranoid and wonder if this thing (the poem-a-day) seems like an exercise in narcissism, or my attempt to seem literarily-holier-than-thou.

Like I said before, I'm really doing this--at least to my conscious knowledge--as a way of blogging regularly without having to bore you with the details of my boring life. I'm not interesting, or rather, my life is not interesting. This is something I've come to realize over the past four or five months. My days are filled with the same things, placed as if on a loop. I wake up; I eat; I shower; I eat; I go to a coffeeshop; I read; I read; I read; I read; I eat; I read; I read; I booze; I sleep. That is my life. Everyday. I'm not sure if I'm dissatisfied. In all honesty, it seems there's nothing to be but content--nothing throws me on either side of the fence, I guess. In short, I have little to blog about. I don't have as much time to keep on the culture wars I'm certain are raging out there--I'm not all that current on current events, because I'm bogged down (mostly) in writing from people who've died decades ago. It's a bit tough to capture my interest these days, because everything begins to seem a bit like deja vu. I've seen or heard it before and perhaps if I tried to focus, I could appreciate it, but I'm just tired or lazy or busy. So yes. That's my apologia for the status and style of the blog at this point.

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Leda and the Swan (1924)
W.B. Yeats

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
by the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
he holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
the feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
but feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there
the broken wall, the burning roof and tower
and Agamemnon dead.

Being so caught up,
so mastered by the brute-blood of the air,
did she put on his knowledge with his power
before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

--

Housewife
Anne Sexton

Some women marry houses.
It's another kind of skin; it has a heart,
a mouth, a liver and bowel movements.
The walls are permanent and pink.
See how she sits on her knees all day,
faithfully washing herself down.
Men enter by force, drawn back like Jonah
into their fleshy mothers.
A woman is her mother.
That's the main thing.

---

Some commentary after the jump...

Poem o'the Day: Anne Sexton, 'The Operation'

Since I've been a bit bad this week, this'll be a bigger, better, faster, harder post. A long Sexton poem, and a link to an incredible mini-film of her at her home. Found it on youtube the other evening, and was struck--of course by her beauty, I guess everyone was, but also by the sheer radiance, the wonderful humor. It's difficult to imagine someone so full of life taking their own, but as you probably know, she also suffered from severe mental illness, and was in and out of institutions throughout her life. I'm re-reading Diane Middlebrook's biography on her, and it's tough not to be taken in. In any case, here we are.

Anne Sexton at home, Part I
AS at home, Part 2














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The Operation
Anne Sexton

I.

After the sweet promise,
the summer's mild retreat
from mother's cancer, the winter months of her death,
I come to this white office, its sterile sheet,
its hard tablet, its stirrups, to hold my breath
while I, who must allow the glove its oily rape,
to hear the almost mighty doctor over me equate
my ills with hers
and decide to operate.

It grew in her
as simply as a child would grow,
as simply as she housed me once, fat and female.
Always my most gentle house before that embryo
of evil spread in her shelter and she grew frail.
Frail, we say, remembering fear, that face we wear
in the room of the special smells of dying, fear
where the snoring mouth gapes
and is not dear.