Friday, October 30, 2015

In The Land of Crinoline

Here I am hanging out with the shorter side of the family.
Left to Right: My mother, Olga Butler Hopper, her mother, Susie Redd Butler, 
my aunt, Marita Butler Brimhall, myself: The Bride, twin cousin, Mocella Brimhall,
cousin Marilym Brimhall not in a good mood, twin cousin Marita Brimhall.
This was taken the day of my wedding, June 21, 1955, or perhaps the day before.
I am wearing one of my favorite dresses with more expensive fabric than I usually used.
It was a modern cityscape print in browns and tans with touches 
of bright peach and turquoise. Fitted bodice, full flared skirt. 
No crinolines; Marilyn was horrified and loaned me a slip for under my wedding dress.
I had remembered I made this dress after I married; I know I bought the fabric at my favorite
fabric store in Provo, Utah (a woman names Crilla worked there, but that is another story) 
and I was only at BYU for that school year, so I must have made it then. 
I wore it for years and years, and still wish I had kept a piece of the fabric.
When she learned I had not planned a reception 
(I had always planned to get my PhD. before even thinking about marriage!)
Aunt Marita stepped up to the plate and made me an outdoor party
complete with home-made hamburger buns. Lots of family friends came.
My mother bought a cake with a white sugar bell on the top.
This picture was taken on slide film with my mother's Contax camera, 
perhaps by my father. It was underexposed, but I have lilghtened it.


CROSSROADS


My body, now that we will not be traveling together much longer
I begin to feel a new tenderness toward you, very raw and                                                                                                          unfamiliar,
like what I remember of love when I was young---

love that was so often foolish in its objectives
but never in its choices, its intensities.
Too much demanded in advance, too  much that could not be
                                                                                         promised---

My soul has been so fearful, so violent: 
forgive its brutality.
As though it were that soul, my hand moves over you cautiously,

not wishing to give offense
but eager, finally, to achieve expression as substance:

it is not the earth I will miss,
it is you I will miss.


Louise Gluck
A Village Life, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009, page 62.
   
One critic has called this poem perhaps the most moving in this moving volume of poems. 
In three three-line stanzas and two two line stanzas, the ideas are beautifully expressed.
It is worth it to read the whole book! This is what I recommend! It is not a terribly long book
and is work by a poet who has mastered the lyric peom.  jhh

1 comment:

  1. I was a little dense on the first reading, thinking at first that the poet/persona was speaking to and caressing a lover, a life's partner. Then I got it that the "I", nearing the end of her live, is addressing her own body. The poem seems to be a holy trinity: the body, the soul, the I.

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