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(Tenured Radical)

Saturday, November 27, 2004

ANNALS OF INTELLECTUAL DIVERSITY: A new UD series



I


THE DRUMBEAT OF CHANGE…


….grows louder, and soon the days of liberal groupthink in the American university will be over. To that end, UD has gathered, at a think tank in Washington DC which prefers to remain anonymous, two English professors, one liberal [L] and one conservative [C], to interpret and discuss the following poem. The audience for this event is composed of two hundred randomly selected students from various local universities.


[UD recites]: Rose of All the World


I am here myself; as though this heave of effort
At starting other life, fulfilled my own;
Rose-leaves that whirl in colour round a core
Of seed-specks kindled lately and softly blown

By all the blood of the rose-bush into being -
Strange, that the urgent will in me, to set
My mouth on hers in kisses, and so softly
To bring together two strange sparks, beget

Another life from our lives, so should send
The innermost fire of my own dim soul out-spinning
And whirling in blossom of flame and being upon me!
That my completion of manhood should be the beginning

Another life from mine! For so it looks.
The seed is purpose, blossom accident.
The seed is all in all, the blossom lent
To crown the triumph of this new descent.

Is that it, woman? Does it strike you so?
The Great Breath blowing a tiny seed of fire
Fans out your petals for excess of flame,
Till all your being smokes with fine desire?

Or are we kindled, you and I, to be
One rose of wonderment upon the tree
Of perfect life, and is our possible seed
But the residuum of the ecstasy?

How will you have it? - the rose is all in all,
Or the ripe rose-fruits of the luscious fall?
The sharp begetting, or the child begot?
Our consummation matters, or does it not?

To me it seems the seed is just left over
From the red rose-flowers' fiery transience;
Just orts and slarts; berries that smoulder in the bush
Which burnt just now with marvellous immanence.

Blossom, my darling, blossom, be a rose
Of roses unchidden and purposeless; a rose
For rosiness only, without an ulterior motive;
For me it is more than enough if the flower unclose.




[L. and C. are both blushing violently.]


UD: I won’t name the author of this poem - I’m wondering whether either you, Professor L, or you Professor C, know or can guess who it is.

[Long silence.]

UD: Hm? Don’t know? Well, I’ll tell you and our audience later…. So, start anywhere. You have the poem in front of you in written form as well, and I’ve handed it out to the audience, so we should be able to begin with our interpretations, liberal and conservative.

L: I’ll begin. Let me just say how offended I am. [Grabs the poem from the podium in front of her, crumples paper slightly. Reads.] “Is that it, woman?” Woman? Are we Tarzan and Jane? Yet another in a long line of poems told from the exclusive position of the dominant male, fussing over his precious subjectivity, objectivizing the female as sounding board and seed-receptor… She is silent in this poem … silenced, rather, by masculinist ideology. Will she or won’t she have a baby? What does this guy care? He won’t have morning sickness for three weeks and then undergo hours of labor…

UD: Professor C?

C: Let me just say how offended I am. The celebration of non-procreational sex in this poem is repugnant. [Reads.] "Be a rose/ Of roses unchidden and purposeless; a rose/ For rosiness only, without an ulterior motive;/ For me it is more than enough if the flower unclose." The poet clearly prefers the idea that this act will be without issue. As for references in the poem to the “tree of life,” “the fall,” “my dim soul“ -- there are hints of spirituality in here, but they are perversely twisted to refer to the crudely erotic rather than the sacred.

L: The problem with the presentation of sex in this poem is not that it’s non-procreational, but that, one, there’s no indication the partners are engaging in safe sex; and, two, the insistent use of gendered pronouns gives no indication that the author has even heard of the world outside of heteronormativity. For this poet, the “completion of manhood” can only occur under the auspices of compulsory heterosexuality.

UD: Could each of you say something about the images the poet has chosen?

L: Well, you can’t get much more tired than the “rose” as a symbol of a woman, and of passion… Drawing his symbol from the realm of dumb, inanimate nature expresses the poet’s disbelief in women as truly human… As for the glorification of smoking, and the association of smoking with eroticism (“your being smokes with fine desire”), I find this beneath contempt.

C: When I think of a rose as a symbol, I immediately think of Socialist French President Francois Mitterand and his followers holding roses at their rallies…. I’m sensing, also, in the poet’s repeated use of the image of the bush, an obscene putdown of the President….

UD: Anything more to say?

[Silence.]

UD: Well, the author is D.H. Lawrence.

L: A sexist and a fascist.

C: A moral degenerate and a socialist.

UD: I’d like to thank everyone for coming.