A Portrait of a Beautiful Woman
baj...@is.dal.ca
C&C please
"Portrait of Beautiful Woman"
You love how you look, so do I,
almost as much as do you.
Beautiful beyond divine,
you need no more for to be wanted.
Than to be wanted, you want no more.
Men want you for your beauty,
the hard wanting that is desire
(that's how I wanted you),
and the object wanting that is ego.
Than to be wanted, you want no more.
But you do not get what you want,
the bright wanting that is respect,
the musical wanting that is friendship
the tender wanting that is love.
neil d.
12:58 AM
01/05/98
Queendazy
good idea, however i had trouble following the poem after all i read wanting(or
some form of the word) for the tenth time. (Sorry, if i'm being too harsh).
try to use some other synonym. or just simply take some lines out. maybe
something like this:
>"Portrait of Beautiful Woman"
>
>You love how you look, so do I,
>almost as much as do you.
>Beautiful beyond divine,
>you need no more for to be wanted.
>Men want you for your beauty,
>the hard wanting that is desire
>(that's how I wanted you),
Bolite23
heady stuff, real, good poem
Ace
W. Cathey
I don't know. I read this several times and I "think" the problem I am
having is that I don't find your images of wanting (ie. vanity) and wanting
(friendship, love, respect) to be compatible. And, while I see this is part
of what you are going for, it seems a difficult mix of a woman that is at
the same time a content narcissist and suffering from a lack of genuine
relationships in her life. Can these two traits inhabit the same person or
are they mutually exclusive?
baj...@is.dal.ca
Maybe I missed the part of this message after "something like this" or are
you telling that no words at all is better than the poem. I'm sorry you
had problems understanding (that's entirely my fault) but could you tell
me a bit of what you understood so that I can determine more clearly where
I failed.
neil d.
Queendazy (quee...@aol.com) wrote:
: good idea, however i had trouble following the poem after all i read wanting(or
: >
: >
CajunTina
What I understand this to say is that she "wants" to be "wanted" for more than
just her looks. She "wants" to be "wanted" for the person she is "inside" not
just "outside". JMHO.
baj...@is.dal.ca
CajunTina (caju...@aol.com) wrote:
: What I understand this to say is that she "wants" to be "wanted" for more than
: Tina
: http://members.aol.com/CajunTina/poetry.htm
Thanks Tina. As always, you are there with helpful comments. Sometimes I
think that the only thing harder than submitting a poem is getting the
courage to tell a writer what you think the poem is about.
I see now that I have managed to correctly express the main ideas. A
'beautiful' woman (more so than 'beautiful' men) is objectified and gets
little from the people around her in terms of personal understanding. As a
previous comment pointed to, I was a bit heavy on the 'wants' (a little to
hasty in 'wanting ' to post).
I wanted . . ah, was trying to express some other ideas but those are lost
because this poem is meant to be grouped with three other poems that I
have submitted to this NG. Those are: "My Lover's Love", "She" and
"Ravishing Rita." My intent in the first two is to demonstrate legitimate
beauty where our shallow, market driven aesthetics fails to see it. The
third was to show the horrific effects that our blindness can have on a
beautiful human being. Putting those together with "Portrait..." was meant
to bring out in "Portrait..." that this woman had, through the ego that we
instill in her with our adoration, even objectified herself and that her
chance of ever getting the tenderness she 'wanted' was further hindered by
that fact that she herself is unable to see it.
At least that was what I wanted .... ah, intended. I know I have a lot
more to do. Thanks for not being a Prufrock and for risking:
"if one, settling a pillow by her head, should say, "That's not what I
meant at all, that's not it at all"" (I know, that's not quite right).
How I babble on! Thanks again,
neil d.