Bruce's comments (member since Feb 03, 2009)

Bruce's comments from the Constant Reader group.

Ruth - thanks so much for the Lowell - Im not really familiar with her work - but I will be correcting that situation. I quite agree with Jim about Lynn Emanuel - I heard her read a year or so ago, and she is just terrific -

Here is a very recent poem of hers from Poetry

An Old Woman’s Paintingby Lynn Emanuel

Scrape the sun from the wall of  the sky.
Cast the great nets of  autumn over the houses.
Even the throat of  the lily is a dangerous inlet.


Let the world stand wearily on the stoop of  the jail
of  the world and the light of  the mind, that small lamp,
pearl of  shine, let the night come to it, as iron filings to a magnet,
mother.

Very interesting indeed. And I was struck by

sleep gives the body back its mouth

I'm sorry you folks are choosing to leave the group. I am a Christian, and there are a number of threads on GR where people have made fun of the pope, and other Christian religious leaders. I don't like them particularly, but I believe that tolerance is important if we are going to have civil discourse. GR is about books, all books. If you object to Rushdie, wouldn't it be better if you shared with us the reasons why, rather than just bailing?

On a more serious note, the combination of the three books has led me to change my grocery habits. I started volunteering at the winter farmer's markets we have here and getting to know our local farmer's. We can get an awful lot that is raised locally including beef, lamb, pork, poultry and of course, all kinds of vegetables, even during the winter. But now its another month and a half till the next farmers market, the first of the spring, and that feels like forever

Yes it is, and let me add to the list Animal, Vegetable, Miracle A Year of Food Lifeby Barbara Kingsolver, which takes theory into action for one family. Read all three books in one month, which might have been overkill. Almost gave up eating anything!!!

Yes - I thought the discussion about corporate/organic producers was particularly interesting. It has led me to significantly change the way I get food, focusing more on the local producers in my area. A really interesting book.

Yes, I saw this weekend that he had passed and was very sorry to hear it. He did live a long and transformative life. Thanks for the link. I look forward to going through those books. I'm also glad to got to see us break through the color barrier at the White House in his lifetime.

Ruth dear, its clear from your postings that you have lots of rowing left in you....in whatever pond you choose

We've talked so much about Jane, I thought a piece from Don might be appropriate - its from his collection, The Painted Bed

Affirmation

To grow old is to lose everything.
Aging, everybody knows it.
Even when we are young,
we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads
when a grandfather dies.
Then we row for years on the midsummer
pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage,
that began without harm, scatters
into debris on the shore,
and a friend from school drops
cold on a rocky strand.
If a new love caries us
past middle age, our wife will die
at her strongest and most beautiful.
New women come and go. All go.
The pretty lover who announces
that she is temporary
is temporary. The bold woman,
middle-aged against our old age,
sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand.
Another friend of decades estranges himself
in words that pollute thirty years.
Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge
and affirm that it is fitting
and delicious to lose everything.

2002

If you do find the Collected Works of Jane Kenyon, Tom, there are a number of the translations in there.

Ricki, thank you very much for putting this link up. I wasn't aware of it, and having spent some time browsing through it I'm very impressed.

We've talked in other threads about the differences between seeing a play and reading it. I think this might be particularly true in the case of Lysistrata. While the general themes are universal in nature, the particular names and references are very much of the Athenian time and place. How did any of you who were involved in performances address this. Judicious editing, just playing it as written?

Did you have a favorite translation? I have the Gilbert Seldes translation, but I know that it's quite dated. I'm looking to pick up another. Did any one particularly jump out at you?

Know what you mean. I can only take her in small doses for just that reason. She can have such a hard, and ruthlessly observant voice to me.

While Lysistrata is by no means the only Greek play to still be performed, or even the only comedy by Aristophanes that is still presented to audiences, no other comedy from the classical Greek and Roman theater has had an impact on modern audiences similar to this one. To list just a few examples from Wikipedia and other sources of contemporary staging’s:

1. 1930 NY - A revival ran for several months
2. 1946 - An all black cast in NY performed the play in the immediate post war period.
3 1968 - Mai Zetterling directed Bibi Anderssen and others in a film in which a performance of Lysistrata is key.
4. 2003 - The Lysistrata Project - a worldwide theatrical action in opposition to the war in Iraq - this was noted in an earlier post by Juanitapat who describes it as “a global reading of an ancient play for a modern purpose.”
5. Musicals and operas have been performed based on the play numerous times and in numerous countries.
6. And in what is I think the most interesting piece of news, this from Wikipedia… September, 2006: a group of gangsters wives and girlfriends in the town of Pereira, Colombia declared a sex strike to force their partners to participate in a disarmament program

Lysistrata was originally performed at the time of, and in the shadows of, the Peloponnesian War, which took place between the Peloponnesian confederacy, which was led by Sparta, and Athens, with its associated city-states. At the time of its performance, Athens had been involved in the war for 30 years or so. A strong anti war sentiment runs through the play, which was the third play Aristophanes had written with an antiwar core. The anti war theme, the theme of the conflict between the sexes, the strong women characters, the raw sexuality and the blunt humor of the play are what, in my opinion, have kept this work current and compelling to modern audiences. Its great fun to read, I hope you all enjoy it as much as I have, and I look forward to the discussion.

Again From Wikipedia
Lysistrata belongs to the middle period of Aristophanes' career and it features the conventional elements of Old Comedy, often with new adaptations. The Chorus begins this play divided against itself (Old Men versus Old Women) and its unification later exemplifies the major theme of the play - reconciliation. There is nothing quite like this use of a Chorus in the other plays. The nearest example is in The Acharnians, where the Chorus of Old Acharnians briefly divides into factions for and against the protagonist.[54:] A doubling of the role of the Chorus occurs also in The Frogs and Thesmophoriazusae but in each of those plays the two Choruses appear consecutively and not simultaneously.

The Roman orator Quintilian considered Old Comedy a good genre for study by students of rhetoric.[56:] The plays of Aristophanes in fact contain formal disputes or agons that are constructed for rhetorical effect. Lysistrata's debate with the magistrate is a good example.[57:] This particular agon however is unusual in that one character (Lysistrata) does almost all the talking while the antagonist (the magistrate) merely asks questions or expresses indignation. Like most agons, it is structured symmetrically in two sections, each half comprising long verses of anapests that are introduced by a choral song and that end in a pnigos. In the first half of the agon, Lysistrata quotes from Homer's Iliad ("war will be men's business"), then quotes 'the man in the street' ("Isn't there a man in the country?" - "No, by God, there isn't!") and finally arrives at the only logical conclusion to these premises: "War will be women's business!" The logic of this conclusion is supported rhythmically by the pnigos, a device that ratchets up the momentum by shortening the lines, sometimes known as a 'choker'. During this pnigos, Lysistrata and her friends dress the magistrate like a woman, with a veil and a basket of wool, reinforcing her argument and lending it ironic point - if the men are women, obviously the war can only be women's business. In the pnigos of the second section, the magistrate is dressed like a corpse, highlighting the argument that war is a living death for women.
The protagonist's victory in the agon early in the play is typical of Old Comedy. The rest of the play conventionally features the comings and goings of a succession of minor characters in a series of farcical scenes and it concludes with a conventionally elaborate exodos during which the victory is celebrated in song and dance.

From: Wikipedia
Lysistrata (Attic Greek:Λυσιστράτα, loosely translated as 'She who disbands armies') is one of the few surviving plays written by the master of Old Comedy, Aristophanes. Originally performed in Classical Athens in 411 B.C. it is a comic account of one woman's extraordinary mission to end The Peloponnesian War. Lysistrata convinces the women of Greece to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands as a means of forcing the men to negotiate a peace, a strategy however that inflames the battle between the sexes. The play is notable for its exposé of sexual relations in a male-dominated society and for its use of both double entendre and explicit obscenities. The dramatic structure represents a shift away from the conventions of Old Comedy, a trend typical of the author's career.

Modern adaptations of Lysistrata are often feminist and/or pacifist in their aim. The original play however was neither feminist nor unreservedly pacifist. Dramatic poets in classical Athens reinforced sexual stereotyping even when they seemed to demonstrate empathy with the female condition and women typically were considered to be irrational creatures in need of protection from themselves and from others.[42:] Thus Lysistrata must protect women from their own worst instincts before she can accomplish her primary mission to end the Peloponnesian War - she has to persuade them to forego sexual activity, even binding them with an oath, and later she must rally them with an oracle when they show signs of wavering. By the end of the play, however, she has demonstrated an extraordinary power over men also - even the leaders of Greece are submissive once caught in her magic.

Hello all, and welcome to our first discussion topic in this new plays group, the Greek classic comedy, Lysistrata. I thought, since I recommended it, that I would begin with a couple of posts to set the stage so to speak. The first comment is an extract from Wikipedia that provides a brief overview to the play. The second, again from Wikipedia, again briefly places it in the context of ancient Greek drama. In the third, I will share with you a little of why I love this play so much, and why I recommended it to the group. This largely has to do with its continued resonance to directors, actors, audiences, and activists in the 20th century, almost 2500 years after it was first performed.

BTW - they are also doing DVD lectures as well which are also very fine.

I've done several of the programs in literature, history, and science, and as a rule, I have found them to be extremely well done. As noted, they are also extremely pricy. But my small town library, our pop. is about 7000, has several of them, and there are literally hundreds available to me through Inter Library Loan. You might want to check out your local library for a way to try them at no cost??