leonardcohenforum.com

I don't pretend to understand all that Geoffrey has posted here but I do know he has given lazariuk a giant thrashing! Awesome!

wikipedia wrote:"Chinese water torture" is the popular name
for a method of water torture in which water is slowly dripped
onto a person's forehead, allegedly driving the victim insane. ...
There is no evidence that this form of torture was ever used
by the Chinese.

Jack,

You have referred to your thread "Never misses" in the Politics ward, where -

Jack wrote:Reminds me of Buffy St. Marie's song "Now that the buffellatio's Gone"

Which was a wonderful Freudian slip.(Intentional?) But then you had to go and spoil it -

Jack wrote:that should have been "Now That The Buffalo's Gone"

"Buffalo", however, is not the same as "hero".

"Buffalo" can be singular or plural. It's a collective noun.
"Hero" is not. "The hero" may refer to a vague generic hero,
but it never means the same thing as "the heroes" in the way
that "the buffalo" does mean the same thing as "the buffaloes".

We sing "Oh give me a home where the buffalo roam".
(Or "..where the buffalo roams" if we happen to be singing
about one particular buffalo, perhaps a white one.)

And we can sing "...where the heroes roam."
Or "...where the hero roams".

But never "...where the hero roam."

And we sing "a bunch of lonesome and very quarrelsome buffalo".
But never "a bunch of lonesome and very quarrelsome hero."

You speak English. Therefore you are familiar
with all the rules of English grammar.

When you changed "{The} destination of the hero is in the sky"
to "Destination of hero is in the sky" you dropped the two definite articles.

The first (implicit) one is often dropped from titles. But the second
one can not be dropped in English without violating English grammar,
or changing the meaning ---unless its object happens to be
a collective noun that can be either singular or plural depending on context.

"{The} Destination of hero is in the sky" does not mean the same thing
as "{The} Destination of the hero is in the sky". The former might make
sense if "hero" was a different word (eg "love") -- or if it was
a proper name. But in that case it would have been capitalized.
Which it wasn't. Which would be carping if the word were very often
used as a proper name. Or if it were used that way in the poem.
But it isn't. And it wasn't. And it doesn't make any sense that way.

(And now that the buffalo hero sandwich is gone,
it's time to get along little doggies....
... if Anunitu's title really was inspired by the great "Riders in the Sky"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXwFmPwO ... re=related
as I first thought it was, then, of course, he'd have to be forgiven
everything.)
~~~~~

Jack wrote:This thinking that he had the discovered the writer's first error and was able to correct it was all he needed to ride off and do the usual Greg thing ...

Ride off into the sky?

But I didn't say it was an error. I said it was a double possessive.
Which is not strictly speaking an error in English. Or at least it isn't
said to be such as often as, say, double negatives are.

And the only reason I said it - was not because I had
"discovered the writer's first error and was able to correct it and that was all I needed to ride off and do the usual Greg thing..."
(--which does happen to be a stunningly accurate description of what you did,
namely, concoct a fantastic meaning for the title, just in order to make others appear to be in error,
and then, completely ignoring the poem itself, immediately ride off into the sky to do the usual Jack thing. )

The only reason I said anything about the title was because that was what was being talked about at the time,
and the only reason I said what I said about it was because there really is no other way to read that title
that makes any sense except as a double posessive. Notwithstanding your desperate attempt to read
it differently. Which was really just to show "how sick and twisted everyone else is".
And I think that it is really unfortunate that your way doesn't work, because it would have been nice
if it did, because Geoffrey doesn't have any problem admiting mistakes,
and I doubt that Harry does, and I know that I don't. Whereas you and Anunitu do)

I am quite certain that it is the commonness of the occurrences of double
possessives in English that was the reason why you felt that the title
had to have some kind of deep obscure meaning, and why Harry said
"even if you are technically right...". The divide between grammatical
and ungrammatical is not sharp, it's fuzzy, and it's very often when a
line is in that twilight zone that we feel that it may, or must, be "deep"
and "poetic", even when, or especially when, we can't say exactly
why we feel that way about it.

The clearest explanation of double posessives
can be found in "Fowler's Modern English Usage", which
was the source for the following

from http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/possessives.htm
(bottom of the page)

Double Possessives

Do we say "a friend of my uncle" or "a friend of my uncle's"?

In spite of the fact that "a friend of my uncle's" seems to overwork
the notion of possessiveness, that is usually what we say and write.
The double possessive construction is sometimes called the "post-genitive"
or "of followed by a possessive case or an absolute possessive pronoun"
(from the Oxford English Dictionary, which likes to show off).

The double possessive has been around since the fifteenth century,
and is widely accepted. It's extremely helpful, for instance,
in distinguishing between "a picture of my father"
(in which we see the old man)
and "a picture of my father's" (which he owns).
Native speakers will note how much more natural it is to say
"He's a fan of hers" than "he's a fan of her."

Generally, what follows the "of" in a double possessive will be definite and human,
not otherwise, so we would say "a friend of my uncle's"
but not "a friend of the museum's [museum, instead]."
What precedes the "of" is usually indefinite ("a friend", not "the best friend"),
unless it's preceded by the demonstratives this or that,
as in "this friend of my father's."

The bolding and underlining done there is my doing,
in order to draw attention to the reason why Anunitu's
"Destination of hero's in the sky" does not fall under
the normal informal double possessive usage.
Namely, while "hero" may be human,
it is not definite, like "my uncle" or "my father".

To belabor the point, in the section called "Double genitive" in the article on "Genitive case"
in Wikipedia (here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genitive_c ... e_genitive )
you can read this

Some writers regard this as a questionable usage,
although it has a history in careful English. Some object
to the name, as the "of" clause is not a genitive.
Alternative names are "double possessive" and "oblique genitive".
The Oxford English Dictionary says that this usage was
"Originally partitive, but subseq. ... simple possessive ...
or as equivalent to an appositive phrase ...".

The key word is "partitive",
But it can be easily explained.

To refer to one of Jack's many books on esoteric topics
one could use a double posessive
--- A book of Jack's

which, when deconstructed, means:
--- A book {in the set, or part} of Jack's {extensive set of books}.

Trying to mechanically reduce that to a single possessive
can inadvertently change the meaning:

--- Jack's book
would imply that Jack has only the one book,

and
--- A book of Jack
would be about "Jack" (which can mean different things
in different contexts) on the pattern "A book of Love"
(as in "Who Wrote the Book of Love") or "A Book of Hours".

One can solve the problem in formal usage by simply saying:
--- One of Jack's books
(which is not a double possessive, since "one of" is clearly partitive.)

And it's my best guess that people might say "A book of Jack's"
in preference to "one of Jack's books" when the "one"
in the phrase "one of Jack's books" is somehow felt to
sound too definite, in an artificial way.
(Also, one does sometimes encounter people who simply
abhor the haughty word 'one', in this and every other sentence.)
~~~~

In sum, double negatives are sometimes required in other languages,
but they are never good in English. Whereas double possessives
do sometimes have a place, in informal English, for expressing
a certain vague shade of feeling that may not be easy to convey
more formally. But whether it's a shade that's ever really worth
conveying, is another question.

And in any case, "Destination of hero's in the sky"
does not even fit the pattern for proper double possessive usage.
And that isn't the only thing wrong with it.


Really, the word that comes most readily to mind
to describe that title is: "blancmange".

Jack wrote:... the usual Greg thing of showing how sick and twisted everyone else is.

I think you're twisted, Jack.

Jack wrote:I think someone should copyright the poem title "Destination of hero's in the sky" because it is a piece of poetry.

It is interesting, the way you have nothing to say about the poem itself,
just the title. Must have been pleasant for you to find the shortest possible
runway for taking off and talking about yourself. Reminiscent of the scene
in Apocalypse Now -

Kilgore walks to a wounded VC :

KILGORE
"Hey what's this ? What is this ?"

SOLDIER
"This man is hurt pretty bad, sir.
About the only thing that is holding his guts in, sir,
is that pot lid."

KILGORE
"What you gotta say ?"

SOUTH-VIETNAMESE SOLDIER
"This man is dirty VC. He wants water ?
He can drink paddy water."

KILGORE
"Get out of here ! Gimme that canteen.
Get outta here or I kick your fucking ass !
Any man brave enough to fight with his guts
strapped in can drink from my canteen any day."

SOLDIER
"Hey colonel, I think one of those sailors
is Lance Johnson, the surfer."

KILGORE
"Are you sure ?"

Kilgore walks to Lance, completely forgetting the wounded VC

(If you don't get it, you're KILGORE,
Anunitu is the VC, and Joseph Campbell is your Lance Johnson.)

I also wonder at what point you knew that you were going to write
an essay in which you tried to interpret "Destination of hero's in the sky"
in terms of "Now that the buffellatio's Gone". Because I am quite certain
that you knew before you posted several posts before you posted the essay.

Geoffrey does that kind of teasing too. And it's interesting to me
because it's something that, for some reason, I have never wanted
to do myself. I don't like suspense, and don't like keeping people in
suspense if I can help it. Or not at least if I'm conscious of it.
Mind you, I'm not criticising it. It's just that I can't relate to the desire to do it.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Jack wrote:This thinking that he had the discovered the writer's first error
and was able to correct it
was all he needed to ride off and do the usual Greg thing of showing how sick and twisted everyone else is.

Well, I never would have gone on just about the title, the way you have, Jack.
And what I said about it, initially, was very brief, and obviously tangential.
In Geoffrey's metaphor, I used the correct outside fork for it, the one for antipasto.
(Although I think Geoffrey was really criticizing me in his first post here.
I'll give my response to that later.)


Moreover, as much as I do dislike didactic poetry in rhymed couplets,
my feelings about it were never so strong that I would ever have said anything about that either.

And all I did say about it (redundantly even), when I did finally say something about it,
is that it is ineffectual.

(Perhaps I also refered to it as "the fucking form". If so, I apologize for that.)

Because that's what it is. And it's a cop out.

It is far too easy to write throwaway lines when writing in rhymed couplets.
And that does no one no good.

For example, Anunitu ended his "Baby Killer" poem with this couplet

Tell the Children not to follow, when the dogs of war are come
Tell the war mongers, to go to hell, and face what they have become

So tell me, how does making that into a rhymed couplet make it more effective than just

Tell the war mongers to go to hell!

?

Well, it doesn't. It's a cop out.
And that kind of cop out ran through all of Anunitu's poems (that I've seen).

You can not tell children anything in a form like that.
They're too smart. They won't listen to you.

Nor do you help yourself when you're dodging your own feelings with lines like those.

But I still wouldn't have said anything.
Not until -

Anunitu wrote:No, you don't win, at your age I was trudging through a jungle, not playing at being a hard ass, I was a hard ass.
Today you don't have to go to war, so you can believe you are a young turk, but to be a turk, you have to have the Chops to pull it off,
and I am afraid you don't have the background to have any Chops. Just because you type something, does not make it less untrue.
Try living a bit longer, and not get yourself broken by a real hard life.

That was the trip-wire.
Because it's screamingly inconsistent with

Tell the Children not to follow, when the dogs of war are come

I am really not in the mood to go into this right now.
But hopefully some will get my drift anyway if I just quote one line from a poem I wrote -

We needed memories like our father's

(Which, incidentally, was not the reason I enlisted.
I was trying to write from what I thought was someone else's point of view,
although in fact it was not a very common reason why anybody enlisted at the time.
(But it did, and still does, occur.)
And my father never - ever - whined about his time at Anzio, for example.
(Which is a pun. Because one thing he did say about Anzio was that he spent
most of his time there in the wine-cellar of the tallest building in town.
Which, for that reason, was ground-zero used by the Germans
in the Alban Hills to calibrate their guns on, so it was never hit.
The safest place in town. And it was probably where my father
got his peculiar notion (which turns out to be correct) that wine
is healthy for you. ))

so anyway....

My problem with Anunitu is not about his ability to write poetry.
He obviously has some very strong feelings, that I feel must be written about,
for his sake, and for the sake of others. There is no draft in the US today.
But the necessity for maintaining a high moral fiber in the service, which
will sometimes mean disobeying orders, is just as urgent today.
People's conscience needs to be prodded every second,
and poetry, potentially, is one of the most effective ways to do it.
(Music, less so, because it's too easy to just dig it.)

My problem with Anunitu is, rather, about his cognitive dissonance.
Telling children in one post to not follow the dogs of war. And then
romanticizing it in another post, about it's having turned him into
a hard-ass, a "real man" presumably, as the recruiters advertise.
And what kid doesn't want to be a hard ass?
And my theory is that Anunitu hasn't worked out these
issues, these contradictions, in himself yet largely because
he was trying to do it in rhymed couplets.
Which are completely inadequate to the task.

As the teachers of bel canto say, his voice hasn't been "freed".
And they say that you really can not judge the poential quality
of a voice, at all, until it's been "freed". And I think that
dropping the pretentious rhymed couplet form would be
a good first step to freeing his voice.


~~~

I have been around some "hard asses" "in my time."
(At least if you consider our favorite game of flicking
razor blades at the other guy's arm hanging over
the side of a foot-locker as "being hard assed'.
They usually stuck in the foot locker. Occasionally
in the arm.))

And I can definitively say that, as a group, all of them
are just as sentimental as everybody else is.
Why, I'll bet every one of them cried at the end
of "An Affair to Remember". But in any case,
I know that they all write poetry.

I am thinking in particular of the relatively brief time
I spent in the cherry point marine corp red-line brig
for protesting the war. (Three charges:
1) disrespecting an officer with a sloppy salute (with the "peace sign")
2) disobeying a lawful order (specifically given to me to be disobeyed) and
3) Disloyalty to the United States (of which I was acquitted.) )

But my trip there wasn't at all like Randy Quaid's trip from Norfolk
to the red-line brig in Portsmouth, as escorted by SM1 Billy "Bad Ass" Buddus"
(Jack Nicolson) and GM1 "Mule" Mulhall (Otis Young), in the 1973 movie
"The Last Detail". On the contrary. My MPs tried to scare me to death by sticking
a 45 pistol in my mouth, and making me stand in some very uncomfortable positions.
(But nothing at all like Abu Ghraib! So that's progress, I guess!)
But they did convince me that I'd be killed by the others
as soon as I got to the brig for what I was doing.

Which of course was utterly untrue.
When I got there nobody gave a damn. All the other
prisoners had served in Nam. And they were "seedy".
And they didn't give a damn about anything. They were
the most amazingly don't-give-a-damn-about-anything
people I've ever met.

While I was there I got to read some Balzac, in translation,
and Carnap's "The Logical Structure of the World",
which I probably wouldn't have read if I wasn't in jail.

And I made some friends. And I got to do something
that has left a lasting impression on me. I got to collect
several dozen pieces of their poetry. They all wrote poetry!

Very few of them had any college, and most of them
didn't have any high school to speak of.
Sure, many of their lines had bits and pieces
of what they thought sounded "poetic", but which
just sounded silly to me (since Wifred Owen
was my ideal). But they didn't try to write sonnets.
And they didn't write in rhymed couplets.
They wrote free verse, "without art, from the heart."
Mostly about their girl friends (mostly lost)
and their families. And hardly anything about war.

And I thought it was great.
It was straight, and it was pure.
~~~

I am with Cate that anyone can learn to write a good strong poem,
That is, to some extent, I think it is a learned thing.
And that there's no limit to how much learning can go into it.

But much more than that, I think it's also an un-learning thing.
All of us have peculiar notions of what poetry is supposed to
look like and be like. But I think that when if we try to write in that way,
the way that we think we're supposed to, then it is always,
to some extent, a cop out.
~~~

I wrote: it boggles my mind that you could have grown up there
and yet have completely missed out on all the contemporary
poetry and music and manifestos and everything else going down
that should have made it totally impossible for you to ever wind up
writing poetry in such a lame ineffectual form as you do.

Here's where that was coming from ....

In the late 1960s and early 1970s we honestly thought our
music and poetry and manifestos would change the world.
And I still think so. Because the funny thing is, it did!
Or at least that's what the "hawks" say. They say that
"we lost the war at home." And I agree, except I'd put it
as having won the anti-war at home.

~~~

And now here's good song from back then -
Radio nostalgia -

Sky Pilot - Eric Burdon

He blesses the boys as they stand in line
The smell of gun grease and the bayonets they shine
He's there to help them all that he can
To make them feel wanted he's a good holy man
Sky pilot.....sky pilot
How high can you fly
You'll never, never, never reach the sky

He smiles at the young soldiers
Tells them its all right
He knows of their fear in the forthcoming fight
Soon there'll be blood and many will die
Mothers and fathers back home they will cry
Sky pilot.....sky pilot
How high can you fly
You'll never, never, never reach the sky

He mumbles a prayer and it ends with a smile
The order is given
They move down the line
But he's still behind and he'll meditate
But it won't stop the bleeding or ease the hate
As the young men move out into the battle zone
He feels good, with God you're never alone
He feels tired and he lays on his bed
Hopes the men will find courage in the words that he said
Sky pilot.....sky Pilot
How high can you fly

You'll never, never, never reach the sky
You're soldiers of God you must understand
The fate of your country is in your young hands
May God give you strength
Do your job real well
If it all was worth it
Only time it will tell

In the morning they return
With tears in their eyes
The stench of death drifts up to the skies
A soldier so ill looks at the sky pilot
Remembers the words
"Thou shalt not kill"
Sky pilot.....sky pilot
How high can you fly
You never, never, never reach the sky

I wish I could write like that.
But at least it did inspire something from me -

Mrs Owen - gmw

I was his Chaplain
And I've been commissioned
To send you his ribbons
And to have you understand

That we're sorry too,
He was a big brave boy,
And we're really very sorry,
Mrs Owen.

He was a big brave boy
Who took it when it came,
What else can I say?

He showed a picture
Of his sister,
And that was ok.

But then he said
"I'm just going to a cleaner bed,
Tell mother I'm not really dead".

And that was all he said
Before he died.
He didn't cry.

We thought that was kind of odd.
But we liked the boy a lot.
And we send you all our heart
Mrs Owen.

amazing post, Man! Awesome. but 2 things bother me.

first, I think that fool lazariuk has driven anunitu away which was not necessary. I started on the title cos it made no sense and read wrong- very obvious. then you and others agree about my grammar point, then the big-head lazariuk tries to draw attention to himself by making up some lame excuses for the title. but I didnt want anunitu to disappear because he was an interesting guy and we had just started chattign about life in the States.

also your bit doesn't make sense
"making me stand in some very uncomfortable positions.
(But nothing at all like Abu Ghraib! So that's progress"), either this all happened to you very recently or you have your times all ass about face (or you think it's progress to have more torture)

Geoffrey wrote: The price of admission to eternity is death. But we human beings are like condoms, as long as there is air inside we will not flush away.

Geoffrey you sure bring forward some 'out of the usual' images on your road to eternal life but since it is always rewarding traveling with you... ;

so why is there air inside? What is in the air that is causing this ?

maybe
"Destination of hero is in the air"

advertising signs, they con you
into thinking you're the one
that can do
what's never been done
that can win
what's never been won
meantime life goes on
all around you" B. Dylan

You wrote;

But I would say the title was 'almost certainly' a typo, Jack.

In an earlier post it seemed to me that you were saying that it was not a typo but something else. There is a lot of cause for confusion in this thread and as you said we are not fleas on a panda's back where everything is either black or white. What can we be certain of?
Wordsworth says "Don't dissect" and T.S. Elliot says "dissect away"
Harry says that he thinks I should marry myself and then he says that I should divorce myself.

I got a chance to speak to Leonard once about his song Anthem, which I like so much, and I wanted him to take some credit for it but he seemed so insistent on claiming that he was especially lucky with that song. Maybe he had intended to write "There is crack in everything" along the lines of his recent poem where he says that "everything brings him happiness" and instead he wrote "There is a crack in everything" and got himself a great song.

Mistakes looked at a different way might be something else. Recently in another forum someone wrote

jack tells me about something he's done and says, 'i've made a mistake.' his mistake prevents me from making the same one. i say 'yes, but your mistake is helpful to me.' and it is.

Because there seemed to be so much confusion in this thread I did use it to experiment with something that I think of as a golden rule of communication and that is "everything being said to you is true, try to imagine what it is true of" I call it Jack's Principal
Jack

Jack, you are right about the confusion! I don't know what to say or on who's side to stand. (Fancy you chatting to Leonard Cohen, you old rascal.) Anyway, that Sunday sermon served to us this morning by Greg was refreshing and depressing. It was like being french-kissed by a beauty queen who'd eaten tuna-fish sandwiches. One minute I was on the beach drinking milk-shake with a scrubber, the next siphoning petrol from a tank through a tube of rubber. He would be good at administering the last rites to new arrivals at a maternity ward, would our Greg. Who amongst us is going to dare post another piece of work after the way he threw his napkin down on the table? He made it all seem so complicated. Here we all were, quietly developing our precious poems, when up he gets and opens the damned blinds. I feel like a young lad at a Boys' Brigade camp with Oscar Wilde my scoutmaster. I knew Saturn was moving across my chart because three times when my ass touched the lavatory seat this morning the fucking door-bell rang. Now this - abandon hope all ye who enter here! How can we risk posting another verse knowing that the art of writing is such a science? Why, even after two words we would all be revealed as incompetent ignoramuses! Thanks to Greg, our cradle has stopped rocking. He has turned on the sprinkler system and soaked us in our beds. He has declared our little tree of knowledge as being smitten with Dutch elms disease and fed it to his chainsaw. No careful pruning with a gentle hand from this weedkiller. That's right, it's come to this. Yes, it's come to this . . .

"I will not be held like a drunkard under the cold tap of facts!"
[Leonard Cohen]

~greg wrote: Jack,
You have referred to your thread "Never misses" in the Politics ward, where -

Jack wrote:Reminds me of Buffy St. Marie's song "Now that the buffellatio's Gone"

Which was a wonderful Freudian slip.(Intentional?)

It was intentional as I was trying to be funny, but when I wrote it - I wrote "Now that the buffellatio Gone" and saw that something about it was wrong and so went about correcting, meanwhile I was trying to keep my eye open for the appearing rabbit that Imaginary Friend had wished for me and thought I had found it with the mistake I made, and that sent me off on another tangent.

thanks for taking all that time to discuss the grammar issues, and Greg I am sorry for describing the Greg thing as being someone who sets about to find the faults of others. I can't make that judgement for the simple reason that I very seldom read through what you write. Maybe I should make more of an effort. I do often scan through it and maybe the bits and pieces I gleam is saying more about me than about you.

Jack

Geoffrey wrote:(Fancy you chatting to Leonard Cohen, you old rascal.)

The door was open and i was in the doorway and since my stomach is large he probably thought I could be of some use in getting rid of an overabundance of food that was in the room. He kept his sunglasses on as he invited me into the room and pointed me to the trays of food. But as luck would have it, standing next to me out of his view was my niece and she followed me into the room. As soon as he saw her he took off his glasses and walked toward us with smiles and an extended hand. My speaking with him might have been just an interference of a better conversation that could have happened.

Geoffrey wrote: He would be good at administering the last rites to new arrivals at a maternity ward, would our Greg.

what I would like to see happen at a maternity ward is that the question that the new arrivals are asking as they appear should be considered. The question "Do you really want to punish me for loving you?"

Jack

lazariuk wrote:
>[Leonard] kept his sunglasses on as he invited me into the room and pointed me to the trays of food. But as luck would have it, standing next to me out of his view was my niece and she followed me into the room. As soon as he saw her he took off his glasses and walked toward us with smiles and an extended hand. My speaking with him might have been just an interference of a better conversation that could have happened.


I don't suppose I was mentioned at all? I don't suppose either of you thought to bring my name up? I thought not. Nobody cares about absent little me when they're having a ball. Well, one day I might not be around here any more - then what's going to happen? What kind of food was on those trays?

And that reminds me, a while ago I mentioned you in a post, Jack. You were inactive here at the time and I felt safe in taking the liberty of quoting something you once wrote on usenet concerning Michael. If it is incorrect, or if you feel uncomfortable with it, I can alter or delete the post. It can be found by looking down the list in this section until arriving at 'Poem for Geoffrey', and then going to page 3.

No Geoffrey you were not mentioned there but as I have told you in the past and don't mind saying again it was more than on one occasion that while gathered with family and friends that I have read aloud posts of yours which I have printed out so that I could share your wonderful writing style and sense of humor with others who I care for. Probably others do the same and so there is no need to think that you are forgotten in times of fun.

Yes I did see what you quoted and thought of that when you spoke of "our Greg". Every now and then it seems that everything is being guided by an impersonal love, including passing conflicts.

I don't remember what the food was.

lazariuk wrote:
>[Leonard] kept his sunglasses on as he invited me into the room . . . As soon as he saw [my niece] he took off his glasses and walked toward us with smiles and an extended hand.


This sounds interesting, and I would love to envisage this incident in my imagination - but I am having difficulty with the part concerning the glasses. How old is your niece, and is she pretty? Why was he wearing sunglasses in a room? Was blinding sunshine streaming in through a large window making everything too bright for one's naked eye? Why do you think he removed them when he saw your niece? Was it to get as good a view of her as possible or do you believe it was a gesture of politeness? I know it is considered gentlemanly to 'tip one's hat' to a female, but the removal of spectacles is, as far as I am aware, hitherto undocumented. Did he put them back on after a second or two, or did he put them into a pocket or on a table for the duration of the meeting? I presume he removed them awkwardly with his left hand and proceeded to dispense with them while simultaneously moving in your niece's direction with an extended right hand - would this be correct? Don't you think he would have taken off the glasses had she not accompanied you? What do you mean when you write that he "walked toward us with smiles"? That is surely just a figure of speech, and that in reality you mean his lips formed only one continuous smile as he took those few steps - or did you actually see him start and stop smiling more than once as he advanced?

Geoffrey wrote: I would love to envisage this incident in my imagination - but I am having difficulty with the part concerning the glasses. How old is your niece, and is she pretty? Why was he wearing sunglasses in a room? Was blinding sunshine streaming in through a large window making everything too bright for one's naked eye? Why do you think he removed them when he saw your niece? Was it to get as good a view of her as possible or do you believe it was a gesture of politeness? I know it is considered gentlemanly to 'tip one's hat' to a female, but the removal of spectacles is, as far as I am aware, hitherto undocumented. Did he put them back on after a second or two, or did he put them into a pocket or on a table for the duration of the meeting? I presume he removed them awkwardly with his left hand and proceeded to dispense with them while simultaneously moving in your niece's direction with an extended right hand - would this be correct? Don't you think he would have taken off the glasses had she not accompanied you? What do you mean when you write that he "walked toward us with smiles"? That is surely just a figure of speech, and that in reality you mean his lips formed only one continuous smile as he took those few steps - or did you actually see him start and stop smiling more than once as he advanced?

The sunglasses. It was following the Anjani concert in Montreal when Leonard had spent some time on stage and so I guess the use of sunglasses was to give the eyes some rest from after being in the spotlight. There were also some glaring lights in the room. He removed them with his right hand and placed them into his left side breast pocket. The reason that I remember that he immediately took off his sunglasses was that my niece later remarked on it to me telling me that she noticed how immediately he took off his sunglasses when he saw her. I later told her of a line in one of Leonard's poems which is "As a sign of respect I take off my sunglasses whenever I speak to the proprietress." I thought he meant it to imply that it is women who are in charge. My niece was in her thirties and very beautiful, in a light up the world sort of way. I know where he placed the glasses because Leah took some pictures and in the pictures the glasses are clearly visible in the breast pocket. If it will help your imagination to see a picture let me know and I will send you one.

The smiles. Yes you are right about the "walking toward us with smiles" was a figure of speech and I don't clearly remember smiles starting and stopping other than there were times when he was smiling and times when he wasn't, but not necessarily during the advance.

Did my answers help you envigage Geoffrey?

~greg wrote: it is interesting, the way you have nothing to say about the poem itself,
just the title. Must have been pleasant for you to find the shortest possible
runway for taking off and talking about yourself.

Yes it was pleasant. That is certainly what I do and I will probably keep on doing it because it is pleasant. I had nothing to say about the poem itself because when I got interested in writing about it the poem was no longer there. All that was left was the title.

I know very very little about poetry and have never received any advanced schooling on the subject and so my ability to contribute here is very limited. What I sometimes think that I can do is to try to give a response by revealing what the words mean to me and I do that by talking about myself and the thoughts that come to me when I look at the words in front of me. If for any reason someone should show me why I shouldn't do that then I will stop if what they say makes sense to me.

I am sure that the way I do things is not for everybody. It is a bit risky like in this case where I place all kinds of meaning to a title without the poem being around to support my meaning. I don't even know what was in the poem. It could very well be that the words of the poem would show that my ideas about the title is as stupid as stupid can be. That doesn't bother me at all because I think that essentially I don't know what poetry is for and am probably wrong about almost everything.

you and others sometimes refer to things you have learned from english or literature teachers. What takes a bulk of what I remember from my early school years was that they cried and I was the cause of it.

Jack

lazariuk wrote:
>My niece was in her thirties and very beautiful, in a light up the world sort of way. I know where he placed the glasses because Leah took some pictures and in the pictures the glasses are clearly visible in the breast pocket. If it will help your imagination to see a picture let me know and I will send you one. Did my answers help you envisage Geoffrey?

Many ladies are pretty, but those who are beautiful in a light-up-the-world sort of way are the most attractive. Yes, your answers were helpful, both helpful and appreciated - and I would like very much to see a photograph. But there is no hurry, and only if it does not incur you an undue expense of effort and energy. Thank you for never failing to be tolerant with me, Jack. At the risk of embarrassing you I can add that you are one of the few people I have ever become acquainted with who has not even a gram of horribleness in their character. This makes you an easy target for predators, but ultimately they serve only to magnify the qualities of your personality. I feel confident and safe with you, because I know there is nothing in your psyche that has a need for attack. The quiet wisdom and calmness in your messages are a pleasure for me to absorb. I am sure Leonard Cohen was honoured to meet you both.

La Belle Sauvage
aksla@online.no

I have to agree - Leah is very beautiful, and luminescent as Jack describes. Another word that comes to mind when I think of Leah is motherly, but not the eat-your-vegetables kind of motherly, more the kiss-your-boo-boo kind of motherly. After about 20 minutes with her, I found myself wondering if it would have been ok to crawl into her lap and fall asleep.

If she is older than I am, it's not by much.

I think it was women like Leah who inspired mother-earth-origin of the world legends.