1. Gorgeous. A poem that reads like a song and echoes in your mind like the ocean in a seashell. This poem drew me in and made me fall in love with it, even with phrases that turned me on my head.
2. This poem feels so dated in the best way. I thought at first its tone was so very fifties - sixties - seventies because it was written then, but by the end of the poem, it’s apparent that the subject is dated, or at least, is talking about (and the narrator is thinking about) the past. Perfect blend.
3. I love the sense of well-rounded, well-read worldliness that comes from this poem. Madame Descartes is clearly very sharp, even in her old age, dropping the names of famous photographers casually, on a friend – basis, and talking about cameras and her famous photographs and quoting her reviewers with her tongue planted firmly in her cheek, and referencing St. Lawrence.
4. Some really gorgeous lines: “not tea, but her usual sequence of afternoon aperitifs, in slender glasses” … “the late novel that embarrassed several continents.” … “sea-blue eyes that’d commandeered both men and newspapers for forty years.”
5. I love when figurative and metaphorical language is mixed. The last line, I realized that the man had come to talk to or interview Madame Descartes, and she leaves him stunned and awestruck of how self-possessed and clever she is, enraptured in her stories, and feeling self – conscious; (metaphorically) turning the tables that he is (quite literally) ripping like a small child.
6. All of the language of her eye made the “nearly opaque” line, about her eyes, pop out at me on a reread. A famous photographer for years, and now at this lunch, she makes it obvious that going blind or not, she still sees much of what the world does not care to.
When I first read the poem I assumed it was written during the first several years following
ReplyDeleteWorld War II. When I reached the end and saw it had been written in 1994, I was shocked.
I loved the way the reporter described her beauty. "Yet her beauty was singular, Volcanic, viscous...as inevitable as lava moving slowly toward you." He described her beauty with such picturesque qualities you can amlost envision this stunning woman (even in age) who is so capitavating that you can't help but notice it.
ReplyDeleteI loved how the reporter described her in a way that you could actually envision the character of Madame Descartes. Initially she is introduced as an elderly woman, who has already passed the prime of her life. As the reporter begins to interview her, he takes the readers back to the days when she was younger and leaves the them feeling as if they have learned so much about her.
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