Doug Henwood wrote:
>On May 28, 2007, at 2:20 PM, joanna wrote:
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>>half porn
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>So? What's wrong with that?
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Well, for one thing, .............
Red lips are not so red
As the stained stones kissed by the English dead. Kindness of wooed and wooer Seems shame to their love pure. O Love, your eyes lose lure
When I behold eyes blinded in my stead!
Your slender attitude
Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed, Rolling and rolling there Where God seems not to care; Till the fierce Love they bear
Cramps them in death’s extreme decrepitude.
Your voice sings not so soft,—
Though even as wind murmuring through raftered loft,— Your dear voice is not dear, Gentle, and evening clear, As theirs whom none now hear
Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed.
Heart, you were never hot,
Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot; And though your hand be pale, Paler are all which trail Your cross through flame and hail:
Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not.
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Owen was writing against the sentimentalizing of WWI butchery...which led to more butchery.
I have to admit the NYC picture evokes to completely contradictory responses in me.
1. Horror, grief at the senseless slaughter and waste of human life and love.
2. Great skepticism about why they ran the picture in the NYT. Did they run it as an anti war message? If so, it contradicts everything else they have published.
Joanna