February 21, 2013 – Lovely County Citizen – Page
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Community Writing Program Spotlight After Valentine’s Musings of an Ozark Aphrodite My poems tend to reflect an immediate response to physical environment, a considered response to whatever I happen to be reading at the moment, and/or a stylistic response to my past reading and education as a scholar of literature. I most frequently frame these responses in the genre of love poetry. Both of the poems I share here, “My Love, Platonic,” and “Too Late For Chautauqua,” reflect an ongoing meditation on different types of love. With the first, I reflect on “Platonic” love, generally understood as spiritual engagement or intellectual investment, rather than physical passion. The sonnet is a traditional poetic form—popularized most famously in English by William Shakespeare— which employs a tight structure of iambic pentameter (ten beats of alternating stress in each line) and consistent rhyme scheme (alternating rhyme in grouped sets of four, six, or eight lines and a rhyming couplet to close the poem). Further, most sonnets tend to feature a turn of phrase or idea at the close, called a “Volta” after the dance Queen Elizabeth I was fond of, in which
the female partner is literally lifted up and moved to another, opposite, position by her partner. This turn is a feature of much work I compose—whether sonnet or other poetic forms—as it allows for interior ironic commentary on the romantic assumptions of the piece. So too my choice of words and images often demonstrates a deeply historical set of references (“little death” is a Renaissance euphemism for sexual climax) or assume a working knowledge of philosophy or myth (the reference to Socrates as “corruptor of the young” refers to the philosopher’s death by forced suicide; Aeolus is the god of wind in Greek mythology). However, even without these frames of knowing, the basic premise of the poem—I don’t want to be just friends—is clear. While elements of the first poem might suggest a reaction to teaching—Socratic circles as inappropriate spaces for romantic attachment—the second poem, “Too Late for Chautauqua,” was in part a reaction to Robert Pirsig’s take on the Platonic in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Pirsig’s use of “Chautauqua”—as both a
Hillary Fogerty currently serves as an Assistant Professor of English at Missouri Southern State University. She was educated everywhere from a one-room school house in the Kootenai Wilderness of Montana to U. C. Berkeley and the University of Washington, and holds a PhD. She has taught courses in drama, literature, writing, film, and food studies for the past fifteen years, with a primary focus on teaching Shakespeare and directing his works for the stage. In Eureka Springs, she has twice served as summer caretaker of Fire Om Earth, building trails, working the land, learning the rocks and plants. She is looking for her next adventure.
Community Writing Program 2013 schedule Each workshop will be from 9-12 and 1-4. The cost for the all-day program is $45. The first five workshops may be purchased together for the discounted price of $200. • Module 3 - March 16 & 19 - Character, Setting, Dialogue • Module 4 - April 20 & 23 - Subtext,
High Events, Closings • Module 5 - May 18 & 21 - Self-Editing and Publishing • Module 6 - June 15 & 18 - Writing the Memoir For more information and to register, contact Alison at alisontaylorbrown. com or 479 292-3665.
To support the emerging local writers of the Community Writing Program at the Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow, the Lovely County Citizen is providing space each week to showcase their work. Pieces will be selected by the program manager, and students must have taken at least one workshop in the Community Writing Program, which was launched on July 21. Selections from instructors and student mentors of the program will also be presented. For more information email alisontaylorbrown@me.com.
meeting of the minds and a type of philosophic engagement—contrasted with my experience of a literal place, Chautauqua, NY, formerly an intentional utopian community of free thinkers which flourished at the turn of the last century, and now an occasional site lectures, concerts, and craft shows. The central figure is “too late” for one type of experience—philosophic or intellectual—but present for another—practical or artistic—and recognizes the difference in between. I like also the unintentional auditory play of “Plato” and “clay,” wherein the greatest of western thinkers is reduced to a lesser version of building materials. It’s an accidental moment that I failed to notice until I read the poem in public. Finally, though it exists in NY state, the poem reflects my appreciation of an Arkansas Chautauqua: Eureka Springs. My Love, Platonic To call my love Platonic would be lying: Know I’ve been called corrupter of the young, Defining all those little deaths, that dying, In circles ever, no equal among. I’ve quested e’er with my deeper prying, I’ve questioned ever with my probing tongue; The answer through me seems but your name sighing, Socratic seeking ends where I begun. All this, my knowing, now distilled your name, And you, Aeolus, every breath my lungs For knowing you I’ll never breath the same Now all my words are but the praise I’ve sung. No, I would love thee all, embodied soul, Spend all my days to make us holy, whole.
This Week’s Author: Hillary Fogerty
Too Late For Chautauqua Finding Chautauqua was never easy Traveling so many back roads unmarked By the time I make it the debate’s long past. And tourists admiring artful quilts Hung in all the old meeting rooms Talk about the aesthetics of fiber The balance of texture and pattern and color Nobody here wants to talk about Plato. So I buy pie plates from potters And ask about clay.
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