[maltesian]

Re. The Butcher's Wife.


Don't pay any attention to me, I'm just waiting for the bus.


*

This piece is concentrated, endlessly readable and full of simple, down to earth detail. It also offers a rapacious sexual creature left over from the Fall of the Roman Empire.

Of course all we know about the good parts (the salacious emperors and their wives and creatures) was written by their deadly enemies who slaughtered them and stole their thrones, but enough of that.


*

"Swine, Boys and Unshaven Beggars" sounds mean and ungenerous - and what a group of aunties would say clucking around the teapot at three o'clock. Isn't this all gossip?

It's a pity we know nothing about the woman other than her implied private immorality and her apparent total breakdown.

Note, normality is by no means the same as sanity. That would be too pretty for words.


*


Clive suggested in passing what may be the chief flaw of this piece, that we have absolutely no knowledge of her husband or his attitude to her growing wildness.

This ignorance and obvious vulnerability (wasn't it all her fault?) may deliver the zest of one-sided vilification which seems to be the piece's driving force.

As good a motivation as any of the valedictorian virtues surely.

The range of testimony we are asked to rely on (lacking that vital aspect) verging from gossip to public scandal asks us to swallow a few gnats the size of camels.


*

Note. I doubt strongly she danced under the baking sun during the Angelus - which takes place before dawn. So much for a close knowledge of one's landscape.

I didn't want to read further but the piece was finished.

Best,

Geoff


*


The Butcher's Wife

While her husband made home deliveries
she made love to swine, boys,
and unshaven beggars
in the back room of the meat shop,
hand rolled sausages tighter than
roman candles ready to explode.

While he cut the heads off chickens
and watched them do their frantic
headless dance, she danced naked
in the village square during the ringing
of the Angelus under a baking sun.
But never without her wide brimmed hat.

Al Ferber

[Steven Schroeder]

Originally posted by maltesian:
Note. I doubt strongly she danced under the baking sun during the Angelus - which takes place before dawn. So much for a close knowledge of one's landscape.

From the Catholic Encyclopedia:

"Angelus Bell: The triple Hail Mary recited in the evening, which is the origin of our modern Angelus, was closely associated with the ringing of a bell. This bell seemingly belonged to Coinplin, which was theoretically said at sundown, though in practice it followed closely upon the afternoon office of Vespers."

Another source:

"The Angelus is a short devotion in honor of the Incarnation, repeated three times each day, morning, noon, and evening, at the sound of the bell."

And St. Mark's Church says:

"The bell will ring the Angelus, (a series of strokes 3-3-3 then 9 strokes), at eight-thirty a.m. twelve noon and five-thirty p.m."

Wow, congratulations on being wrong. I didn't want to read the rest of your message, but it was over anyway.



------------------
Steve Schroeder

[maltesian]

For Steve Schroeder.

On rereading the piece (I also read poems when I get a chance), I was struck that Al Ferber uses the term Nakedness, as I have, to describe a woman only wearing a straw brimmed hat. Somehow, despite logic, the hat brings out the nakedness superbly.

He has captured a lot of elements of a small society in a short piece, no easy task by any means. Who can disguise the fact that slanders and poisonous malice thrive in small picturesque towns?

If he has taken some short cuts in description, that is justified by the compression essential to meet his aims.

*

I have nothing to add to Steve's fondness for fact checking. I hold that in reading a poem, one is not bound to use other information than what is generally available.

The Angelus is generally presented occuring at dawn. That it reoccurs at noon and sunset, when I assume it is inaudible in the bedlam of daily traffic, is another matter.

I was born and frequently travel in the Mediterranean and have quite strong impressions of what is and is not likely.
Compared to fact checking, I'm sure that this amounts to a hill of beans.


Best,


Geoff


[This message has been edited by maltesian (edited March 09, 2004).]

[Wild Bill]

FWIW, in the 50's at Sacred Heart church in Wichita Falls, Texas, the Angelus rang three times a day. It was a different day, but we could hear it clearly over traffic. We were expected to stop what we were doing and recite the prayer beginning "The angel of the Lord declared unto Mary and she conceived by the Holy Ghost." I imagine it was nearly universal until Vatican II.