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September 10, 2008

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That third paragraph. Stunning.

What you must have lived to write it.

So interesting that you start this post stopped, and you stop it, just before the poem, with someone you stop, all through associations. It's all a gift to me tonight. Thanks.

Beautiful. Have you read Tess Gallagher's Moon Crossing Bridge? A book of poems concerning the death of Raymond Carver. I found them extremely moving. Wished I could have written such.

While we're living, breathing, taking care of one another, those associations are vital. I see a fresh cantaloupe at the farmers market, and though I hate cantaloupe, I walk over and pick it up, smelling to see if it's fresh and ripe. I buy it, I take it home to my husband. One day, I'm sure, that cantaloupe that I hate will make me miss my husband and it will be precious to me. I might even come to love cantaloupe, regardless of whether I ever learn to consume it.

(o)

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Bleak but beautiful. For me, it's the second stanza that resonates. What a find. Thanks, Beth.

Thanks for clothing in beauty the hard truth.
The great eternal mysteries do indeed address us in small everyday matters.

Only in my own middle age have I understood that the dead had their own associations, mostly unspoken and unknown to me, their student, and that in my own life I am creating, unwittingly, associations that will stop someone else, someday, in the market or the street, stung for a moment by the grief and joy of having loved me.

Worth quoting again.

(o)

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Who was Cassandra?


  • In the Iliad, she is described as the loveliest of the daughters of Priam (King of Troy), and gifted with prophecy. The god Apollo loved her, but she spurned him. As a punishment, he decreed that no one would ever believe her. So when she told her fellow Trojans that the Greeks were hiding inside the wooden horse...well, you know what happened.

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