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Whoaaaaaaa! for a minute i thought i was on one of my two writer's lists. Such a literary work. Did you unintentionally post this to the wrong list? If so, don't worry, dear, all of us have done this at one time or another. If I were you I'd repost it to whatever list you really intended. Funny thing what those mice will click on when you have pd, eh? :))) BTW, I've been known to my family as the Queen-of-missent email. LOL How are things going for you lately? If you'll post me privately I can suggest software which will give you a little variety in your email but still stick to straight no-nonsense oldfashioned text-only email if you want that too. I also have some interesting info you may like to hear about the part "counters" play on webpages and where you can find some quite humorous ones. Oh, and--jp Sorry this isn't in rhyme, saving it for another time. :)))) hoping to hear from you soon via cyberspace-only bk At 11:47 AM 11/28/00 -0500, you wrote: >(note from jmp - i think i have found another hero] > > >Self-Reflection > >In this poem, I promise, you will learn everything I know >about myself. Despite the fact I get it wrong, I've been >looking in the mirror my whole life. I think I see myself, >but as you know from your own experience, that's rarely >the case. How ridiculous that we spend so long gazing at >the unattainable, fooling ourselves with our own faulty >facts, our faces flying toward us exactly backwards. We >could spend that time dancing or reading out loud. We >could make love more often and try to keep our minds >from wandering. After all of these years I can't even pick >myself out in the class photograph. But I can recognize >your face anywhere. It could be that, actually, objectivity >is underrated and love its greatest example. This relegates >relativity to twentieth-century egotism, nothing more than >a medieval scheme to place the earth at the center once >again. Just a theory. And there are others. For example, I >have believed that growing a good tomato is as important >as writing a poem. For example, I have believed in the >open exchange of ideas. I have believed we are not the >same and this is the greatest liberation. > > > >Cathryn Hankla >from her book Texas School Book Depository >Copyright 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000 by Cathryn Hankla. >All rights reserved. > > > >Cathryn Hankla, professor of English at Hollins University, is the author >of three previous collections of poetry—Phenomena, Afterimages, and >Negative History—a collection of short stories, and the novel A Blue Moon >in Poorwater. She is poetry editor for the Hollins Critic. > >About Texas School Book Depository: Humorous, quirky, and spiritually >meditative by turns, Cathryn Hankla's prose poems move by associative >leaps and take their inspirations from cultural and personal icons. A >shadow narrative moors the collection in the perspective of a woman who >survives a difficult childhood to eventually comprehend the paradoxes of >adult life and whose journeys into her heritage bring her to a fuller >realization of her place in the world. Travels to Prague and Paris, >allusions to literary, spiritual, artistic, and political figures, local >and familial lore—all become ready touchstones for the revelation of >feeling and reevaluations of identity and the nature of freedom. > >While recognizing the danger in exploration, Hankla takes pleasure in >questioning the status quo and takes issue with those who sidestep >emotional or intellectual adversities by affecting apathy, as when she >attempts to find the center in "Turn Something Inside Out": "Would I >discover you there, poised like a prayer to be answered? And if you were a >prayer, how would I find the center? If at the center there were a fear, >like a stitch left in an incision, how would I know how it began unless >you told me, unless you held me, upside down, and shook until you faked >nothing, neither interest nor passion nor forever." > >In the title poem, the Louvre's huge cache is searched, not for the famed >Mona Lisa or Egyptian antiquities, but in a metaphorical quest for >something now forever lost—a nation's collective naïveté, destroyed with >Kennedy's assassination from the gunman's nest in what was then the Texas >School Book Depository. In "Self-Reflection" the critical irony turns >inward, amplifying the usual solipsistic despair—not even the self can be >known: "Despite the fact that I get it wrong, I've been looking in the >mirror my whole life. I think I see myself, but as you know from your own >experience, that's rarely the case." Yet the poem ends by offering hope, >in a series of comical but potent "theories": "For example, I have >believed that growing a good tomato is as important as writing a poem. For >example, I have believed in the open exchange of ideas. I have believed we >are not the same and this is the greatest liberation." Intimate and >unusual, amusing and moving, Texas School Book Depositor! >y is > a truly wondrous offering. > >"From the strikingly smart 'God Attack' to the wryly speculative 'Turn >Something Inside Out,' wherein the speaker notes that penetrating to the >core of things 'would be easier if I were you, carefully promising >nothing, delivering the same,' this collection invites us to see a self as >a 'whole thing' that reveals itself only as it is turned inside out >through the agency of art.... Toughened, not jaded, Hankla promises much >and delivers." — Kelly Cherry > >Louisiana State University Press >Baton Rouge, LA 70803 >http://www.lsu.edu/lsupress/ > >Poetry Daily >http://www.poems.com/ > > >janet paterson, an akinetic rigid subtype parkie >53 now /44 dx cd / 43 onset cd /41 dx pd / 37 onset pd >TEL: 613 256 8340 SMAIL: POBox 171 Almonte Ontario K0A 1A0 Canada >EMAIL: [log in to unmask] URL: http://www.geocities.com/janet313/