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#Scottish poetry
victusinveritas · 2 months
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Poem by Colin McIntyre (1927–2012)
Published in From the Line: Scottish War Poetry 1914–1945 (ASL, 2014)
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"Batman's aff his nut / Have you seen the way he cuts aboot / Dressed up as a mad fuckin bat / Batterin guys..."
Read it here | Reblog for a larger sample size!
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ahpoems · 8 months
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In your absence.
I  want you to scoop out my brain and climb into my mind. To see how empty the world is through heartbroken eyes.
A.H.
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ammonitetestpatterns · 6 months
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william dunbar
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moodymeangirl · 11 months
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“come gather round assholes and chop me a line i'll tell you a tale of a good friend of mine  ... there's a chain that is snaking all through our dreams it wraps round our eyes and shuts out moonbeams and my young heart was twisted by dark sexual games and the terminal shadow of heartache and stain ... now i live among lost men with winding down lives i sleep on their sofas and feel up their wives i wake late in the morning with a scream in my skull i shuffle to the kitchen but the knives are all dull” (Night Lillies by Jackie Leven)
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vox-anglosphere · 1 year
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'Where dips the rocky highland' stirs the Scottish soul to its roots
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poem-today · 10 months
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A poem by Douglas Dunn
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The Glove Compartment
After her stroke, hers was the first to go. It sat for two years in their garage, though, All through the months of her recovery, Though that was far from full. Vocabulary Re-emerged, but slowly. So he retired A few years earlier than anticipated. He couldn’t leave it all to the nurse he’d hired; She said he shouldn’t, but that’s what he did. ‘Please, sell my car. I’ll never drive again.’ It seemed as final as a sung Amen. He knew it must happen, but didn’t know when.
When he opened her glove compartment He found small change, lip salve, tissues, receipts From shops and filling stations, peppermint, An ice-scraper, lipstick, and boiled sweets, Two tickets for a play at Dundee Rep (Unused), all sorts of trivial stuff. He shoved them in a bag. Sat back and wept. There’s love in the world. But never enough.
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Douglas Dunn
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fiddleleafpig · 1 year
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the first draft of a WIP poem about home, the cost of living, and community
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written by Lauryn Hill, 2023
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checkoutmybookshelf · 10 months
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Grad Studies Are Weird Soemtimes: Scottish Poetry Edition
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Ok, so enough of you enjoyed reading my graduate paper on Clarice Starling and Hannibal that I thought I'd toss another paper I'm proud of out into the world. This one is from my master's degree, and once again, there was one Shakespeare class, one early modern lit class, and a bunch of utterly random classes. This paper is from my Scottish poetry class, and it is a look into the types of metaphors we use when we talk about illness and how monsters end up as both victims and perpetrators in the common lexicon of figurative language. I was, unfortunately, unable to link the full text of Edwin Morgan's "Gorgo and Beau," but it's in A Book of Lives, so any of y'all with library access should be able to track it down without too much trouble if you want to. I hope y'all enjoy!
Modern Monsters: Myth and Modern Medicine in Edwin Morgan’s Poetry
Due to his background in Old English poetry, it causes readers little surprise when familiar monsters are produced and reproduced in Edwin Morgan’s poetry; even in those poems that have to do with health and modern medicine.
Many critics view “Gorgo and Beau” as a semi-autobiographical exercise on Morgan’s part; a way to explore and come to terms with his own emotions and thoughts on his illness. This reading of the poem is certainly valid, but also criminally shortsighted. Within his own explorations, Morgan tapped into thoughts and emotions that are experienced universally, and by modernizing monsters from Beowulf’s dragon to Tolkien’s Great Eye, Morgan gives contemporary readers a new chapter of monsters to fight. It may seem incongruous to lump together dinosaurs, and dragons, and disembodied eyes and cancer, but “Gorgo and Beau” not only conflates these idea-symbols, it irrevocably integrates the history, mythology and symbolism of monsters with modern medical science and the human experience of cancer.
Medical science has only begun to understand cancer in all of its permutations, and wrapped up in the social consciousness with cancer are the old fears of death and the unknown afterlife. Dinosaurs and mummies make a kind of oblique sense as the face of cancer through the lens of those old fears. Morgan adds contemporary scientific knowledge to the mix in order to update the face of the fears that humanity battles. Within this essay, the text of the poem itself will be examined, and brief histories of the monsters Morgan names will be traced, before being examined in the context of cancer patient narratives and the common metaphors found in those narratives. Through this examination, readers will see how the old monsters are updated to become the center of the narratives we write for ourselves during times of adversity.
The History of Monsters
In “Gorgo and Beau”, Morgan explicitly names mummies, dinosaurs, and dragons, while describing the nucleus of a cancerous cell as a “ragged, pulsing, encroaching, a bloodshot eye” (Morgan 61). These four can be divided into two subgroups: the “monsters” which came directly out of history and had a mythology built around them (dinosaurs and mummies), and the monsters that sprang from literature (dragons and the eye). Morgan has taken the separate histories of these monsters, acknowledged them, and then woven them together. Dinosaurs and mummies are referenced both by Morgan (56-57, 61) and by scientific and archaeological research (Teucher 76, 77) as having been affected by cancer. This biological evidence of illness in the past helped humanity construct an initial hypothesis regarding the progression of disease, particularly cancer.
The discovery of dinosaurs with lesions and tumors is a recent one, and little mythology has arisen from it due to pop culture’s view of dinosaurs as ancient, primeval monsters that occasionally are brought back to in film. However, their classification as monsters in pop culture  builds a solid platform for Morgan to subvert with imagery of “dinosaurs on crutches” (57).
Egypt has always been viewed by the west as something mysterious and likely cursed. The fabled ‘Curse of the Mummy’ was born and spread in the early 1900’s, by the string of incredible bad luck that accompanied Howard Carter’s expedition which uncovered King Tut’s tomb. Between stories about dire warnings inscribed in the tomb and Lord Carnarvon’s death, supposedly via infected mosquito bite, the link between illness and action was solidified and solidly entrenched in modern popular culture (Luckhurst 6-8). Even into contemporary culture, The Mummy (1999 film, dir. Stephen Sommers) propagated the idea between invading a tomb and illness, by picturing the curse as a form of wasting disease among the American archeologists who opened Imhotep’s tomb. While this is easily seen as a 20th Century view of Egypt, it speaks to a much longer history of seeing illness as a phenomenon caused by any number of supernatural causes, from the displeasure of the gods, to demons, to immoral thoughts or behavior (Teucher 71-76).
In contrast to the mythology that comes from historical and physical evidence, there are those monsters born and raised in literature. Morgan cites dragons and his “bloodshot eye” (61) as the literary monsters he is fleshing out.
In the text of the poem, the Bloodshot Eye represents the nucleus of a cancerous cell, about to explode with malignancy. In the wider world of literature, however, the Bloodshot Eye has a twin in Tolkien: The Great Eye of Sauron. In The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo encounters the Great Eye through Galadriel’s mirror. Tolkien describes the Eye as “rimmed with fire, but was itself glazed, yellow as a cat’s, watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing” (471). Indeed, not only is the Great Eye described similarly to Morgan’s nucleus, but the overall effects of the One Ring and the Eye on Frodo can easily be seen as the ravages of a long-term illness, and Sam’s presence becomes the constant surveillance of a patient by a doctor.
Tolkien was pulling from Irish and Celtic mythology when he gave Sauron his Great Eye (Lense 3), and it functions within the novel as a sense of constant surveillance for the Fellowship. In terms of this essay, the Great Eye functions as a link to the tradition of the Evil Eye. This link helps tie cancerous cells to the literary monsters that Morgan is using to metaphorize cancer.
The final monster that Morgan cites is the Dragon. Dragons have been the monstrous enemies of heroes as far back as Beowulf, and given Morgan’s background in Old English literature (Jones 123), it is hardly surprising that dragons make an appearance in “Gorgo and Beau”. Historically, however, Dragons are associated with the object that the hero of the tale must overcome to bring himself glory, and victory for whatever cause he is fighting for. Beowulf’s Dragon, in a fashion similar to Bilbo’s Smaug, must be defeated once a thief has violated the Dragon’s horde. The Redcrosse Knight battles a dragon which gains him a wife, a kingdom, and personal fame. And those are merely the English literary dragons; Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Babylon all had legends about serpentine dragons that were evil and had to be defeated (al-Rawi 82). Biblically, the Old Testament contains numerous stories about Dragons, ranging from the defeat of a Babylonian Dragon by the Dragon Daniel, to representations of dragons as satanic figures punishable by God (al-Rawi 83). Judeo-Christian representations of dragons have also spread and influenced Islamic and Arabic representations of dragons (al-Rawi 90).
Contemporary film and popular literature has also seen a major resurgence of dragon popularity, although the focus has significantly changed. Where old representations picture dragons as monsters to be defeated, contemporary culture has reframed dragons as allies, albeit powerful and incredibly dangerous allies. George RR Martin and Naomi Novik have integrated dragons into their high fantasy novels, both to great success. Novik blends historical fiction with dragons to create seafaring travel adventures (Scheurer 572-73), while Martin uses dragons to subvert monstrosity and sexual misconduct in his novels (Rosenberg 16).
What do all these monsters, historical and literary, have in common? They have been the face of those partly-understood things that humanity fears. These monsters personify things like natural phenomena, religious ideals and vices, evil, and most importantly, illness. The mythology of each monster is dated from a specific historical period, has morphed and mutated over time, and yet Morgan references them together in a context that is entirely modern.
What We Talk about when we Talk about Cancer
            Cancer is a life-changing diagnosis, and for many cancer patients, life becomes a narrative experienced through a lens of illness (Mathieson 284). There are medical and scientific models that describe this phenomenon, and while we will briefly touch on them, the models this essay is most interested in are those built by the patients themselves: the metaphorical language that is built to allow cancer patients to come to terms and reinvent their identities with.
            Plenty of medical studies have been done in the manner of interview, with the end goal being to examine the narratives that the cancer patients build for themselves. These studies were done in order to look at patient identity (Mathieson et. Al), perceived turning points, memories and PTSD symptoms (Thomsen et. Al). These two studies are on the leading edge of a long history of defining a genre for cancer patients who wish to tell their stories. Susan Sontag’s 1977 book, Illness as Metaphor was one of the first cultural studies of metaphor in illness, and since that publication, writers and scientists alike have been attempting to define a new genre for patient narratives (Ulrich 39). While the exact definition for the genre of patient or illness narrative is still uncertain, people have been confident in collecting the metaphors commonly found in these types of accounts, and applying them to how the language of cancer patients is used changes after the course of an illness.
            There are several types of metaphors used by both physicians and patients when describing cancer. The four big classes of metaphor which recurred in the research for this essay are as follows: Martial Metaphors, Journey Metaphors, Psychopathology Metaphors and Eating Metaphors.
            Martial metaphors are the most commonly used metaphor by both cancer patients and physicians. Every time you hear about someone “battling” cancer, or a cancer drug that “fights as hard as [you do]” (Reisfield 4025), that is an example of a martial metaphor. Indeed, most of the Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign’s rhetoric is couched in martial metaphors. When cancer patients die, it is said they “fought a good fight”, or “battled and lost”, or “succumbed”; they are never, in the case of martial metaphors, victims of a disease, they are soldiers. Being soldiers creates an interesting metaphorical argument in the case of cancer patients. A soldier is capable of action, has been trained to act, and yet is entirely passive in the decision-making process before the course of action is handed down. On top of that passivity, martial metaphors tend to be masculine, paternalistic, of an uneven power structure, and violent (Reisfiled 4025). The other danger with martial metaphors is that patients can come to see their own bodies as the enemies, rather than, say, an invaded and occupied state.  Unless carefully guided, these metaphors exclude a large chunk of patients who do not identify in a martial fashion. Being a metaphorical soldier also puts a lot of onus on the patient to win a battle the patient didn’t choose, and (unless an oncologist gets cancer) don’t have the academic background to completely comprehend in the first place. Martial metaphors work exceedingly well on the surface with cancer, which is why they are so frequently used. However, in the cases where the patient doesn’t identify with martial narratives, a patient’s personal identity (which, upon the diagnosis of cancer is nearly always thrown into question) is questioned even more, and the journey to rebuild it becomes harder. Medical literature began to realize the inadequacies of using martial metaphors almost exclusively, and so Journey metaphors then begin to come into use.
            Journey Metaphors have been applied to so much of modern life that it has gravitas enough to allow a journey through cancer to be mapped onto it. Another strength of the journey metaphor is in terms of identity (Reisfield 4026). When a patient’s identity is called into question by a cancer diagnosis, rather than being blasted to pieces by martial metaphors, the journey metaphor allows the old identity to slowly grow and metamorph over the course of treatment. The journey metaphors are less defined by gender, and so are applicable to a wider number of patients.
            Applicable to just about all cancer patients, however, is the Psychopathology metaphors. These metaphors stretch back to the early 1900’s, to the days of Sigmund Freud and his psychoanalytic theories of Id, Ego and Superego (Ulrich 88). This class of metaphor began as an extension of Freud’s theory that hidden neuroses manifest themselves outwardly, sometimes as disease. Freudian Psychoanalysis focused on the patient reliving the traumatic memory or event that was believed to be the root cause of the disease.
            Eventually, as Freud’s theories were scientifically phased out and disproven, claiming sexual stagnation as the cause for cancer fell out of practice. What the psychoanalysis morphed into was Psychopathology, which is popular even in modern medical practices (Ulrich 90). The modern version of this is the Simonton method (Ulrich 90), which involves the patient taking responsibility for whatever it was that the patient did or thought to get cancer, and then visualizing the cancer shrinking away. This class of metaphors is incredibly broad; involving many cancer patients with personalized narratives and metaphors. Oncologists and physicians tend not to suggest this methodology or set of metaphors exclusively; if the patient wishes to use these methods, doctors are encouraged to understand what is going on in the patient’s mind, as well as why they chose that method, while still advocating traditional medical treatment. 
            Finally, there are “Eating” Metaphors. Many, many patients have suggested that their cancer is “eating them from the inside out”, with variation on that metaphor (Scott 231). The Eating metaphor is easily meshed into the other classes of metaphor, but in essence, the Eating metaphor creates a monster living within the patient, eating away at the life of the patient. This metaphor sets up a power dynamic where the patient is passively being used, and the cancer has the agency.
            In terms of actual patient care in a medical setting, these different types of metaphors address things like agency and identity of the patient, the difficulty and duration of treatment, as well as a glimpse into metaphoric causes of the disease itself. In terms of the genre of Illness Narrative, the different metaphors not only work to describe the disease and treatment course, but the type of metaphor chosen by the patient speaks to the patient’s personality and sense of agency during the course of the illness and treatment. In terms of literature that deals with illness, the choice of an author to include one metaphor over another (most commonly, martial metaphors are used) gives insight not only to the character who might be facing cancer, but also a window into how society at large views illness, illness narratives and metaphors.
            These four classes of metaphor each function on different, and occasionally intertwined levels to address issues of agency for the patient, physician, and even malignancy; issues of identity, and issues of power. Each traditional set of metaphors comes with its own issues, but Edwin Morgan manages to synthesize the useful aspects of each style of metaphor, as well as common conceptions and misconceptions of disease. This leaves the patient in a far stronger position with more agency. “Gorgo and Beau” is a synthesis of what has previously been the norm for describing cancer and cancer patients, and Morgan’s own choices, which sets up a power dichotomy of agency, not passivity.
Morgan’s Argument for a New “Chimeric” Cancer Metaphor
The structural base of “Gorgo and Beau”, metaphorically at least, rests on martial metaphors. The conversation between these two cells begins with a façade and mockery of the opening niceties of a conversation. The opening salvos serve to establish the battle lines and roles of each cell. Gorgo speaks like a champagne villain, saying “My old friend Beau, we meet again” (Morgan 56). This opening line, sounding so much like your stereotypical Bond villain, is leavened with the mockery of a common teenager: “How goes it?/ Howzit gaun? Wie geht’s? Ca va? Eh?” (Morgan 56). Were Morgan not a Scottish writer, the reader might even expect to see a “whazzup” in that list of mockery. The repeated salutations to Beau by Gorgo work effectively like a taunt. It is a challenge for Beau to enter into the language of the martial metaphor.
Despite how well-established martial metaphors are, Morgan manages to subvert (to a certain degree, if not entirely) the initial delineations that come with martial metaphors. Beau, instead of responding like a general with troops at the ready, manages to sound like a weary professor with a puffed-up colleague. Rather than rising to a challenge, Beau says, “Same old Gorgo, flashing your credentials:/…Why Do I talk to you?” (Morgan 56). Beau is attempting to steer the progression of the metaphor into that of a journey metaphor, not a martial one. To assume that Gorgo has credentials and that prior conversations have taken place between these two cells automatically assumes a journey, onto which a cancer metaphor without the problems of martial metaphors could be mapped. Morgan, however, has excellent control over the direction of the metaphor, and Gorgo subverts Beau’s attempted subversion of the metaphor by in fact, using a journey metaphor, speaking of the natural cycle of cell reproduction and death (Morgan 56). Beau is then forced to integrate martial and journey metaphors in order to attempt to find the upper hand. To close the opening ceremonies, Beau mixes martial and journey metaphors, saying “You will never get me to abhor/ A body billions of us have laboured to build up/ into a fortress of interlocking harmonies” (Morgan 56), which essentially takes the foundation of a martial metaphor (the armies building the fortress) and maps onto it a journey to a safety from Gorgo and his cells. That exchange essentially closes the opening niceties of the conversation of the poem, but the foundation of mixed metaphors it sets is a strong one, that only gets more complex as the poem speaks on.
More than once, one of the two cells mentions that they are “at war”, or calls on the other to justify their armies and battles (Morgan 59). It is very clear that the style of the poem lends itself most easily to the martial metaphors, but the underlying, foundational metaphor is not the interest of this essay. The metaphors, be they mixed or standing alone, that this essay is interested in are the ones dealing with the relationship between cancer and affected patient.
Most commonly in cancer narratives we see the patient using metaphors like “eaten” and “devoured” (Scott 233), essentially personifying their respective cancers as some sort of amorphous beast that eats not only their physical selves, but also their identities. But a faceless enemy is often the scariest, and Morgan has associated common metaphors in cancer narratives with literary and historical monsters. Essentially, Morgan reproduces the same metaphors, but positions patient and disease in such as way as to produce an entirely different dynamic: That of hero and monster.
 People don’t “win” against disease, it’s a statistical nightmare. Morgan gives his readers a clear, true and hard look at the reality of living with disease and violence, from the viewpoints of both Gorgo and Beau. The male cancer ward examined by Beau is a sterile, impersonal, mechanical place where the physical body goes to rot away (Morgan 57). The mechanization and artificiality of the cancer ward makes something natural, like vomiting, seem unnatural, and destructive. There is a sense of absolute passivity on the part of the patients, like the disease is in control and the artificial landscape of the cancer ward is their quarantine ground; they have no freedom to leave it, and no agency to affect either their disease or their environment, or even the actions of their own bodies. Gorgo’s rebuttal to the artificiality of the cancer ward is the mass violence in Africa, where agency is violently taken from individuals, along with their health and often body parts (Morgan 58). In both examples, the individuals have no agency, and are lost among the masses. Individuals mean little in comparison to the statistics, and the statistics say that violence and disease, not only are the parties who control the individual’s agency, but the clear winners of any kind of martial metaphor.
Dragons, on the other hand, have an excellent track record of being defeated. The Redcrosse Knight, Beowulf, and Prince Charmings throughout literature have all slain their dragons; they won those battles. Morgan sets up a clear dichotomy with cancer and cancer patients, with cancer going from the above referenced amorphous, statistical mass to a single, ready-to-devour-or-be-devoured monster, and the cancer patients going from passive observers of their own fate to the heroes of their own narratives.
Let us examine the first monster that Morgan grafts onto cancer: The dinosaur. This is not a perfect example of the change in power dynamics that Morgan’s poem is working towards, as the dinosaur in question is both the monster and the victim. However, thanks to their size, mystery, and film debut in the Jurassic Park movies, dinosaurs have gained a public image of being powerful, and at the top of the food chain (ergo, in control of their surroundings; they possess agency). For Gorgo to then give the dinosaur “hirpling hip” (Morgan 57) and to strip the dinosaur of its perceived grace and strength and motion is terrifying. It is the sort of thing parables and fables are made of, like the story of the Lion with the thorn in its’ paw. This great and terrible creature is brought low, and yet through this perceived lessening, the agency is found to keep going. Again, this is a preliminary metaphor in the poem, and it falls apart without too much prodding, but it serves as an early example for the other monsters.
The second of the historical monsters Morgan uses is the mummy. The mummy is a lightning-quick reference in a longer list of reasons why all Gorgo stands for is death, but it is stated that “…mummies tell the future/ How terrible the past was” (Morgan 61), and yet the curse of the mummy as it stands in popular culture is a myth that encourages life after or even in spite of death (Luckhurst 8). If Gorgo is advocating for death as the final agent, then life after or in spite of death gives patients, even terminal ones, hope of agency. More than that, the curse of the mummy becomes a metaphor for a cancer cure, and if a patient takes on the persona of archaeologist or Egyptologist, then suddenly they have agency. They aren’t trapped in the sterile, artificial cancer ward, they are hunting through ancient records and ruins with a good team in order to discover the secret tomb, and the cure to the curse that the mummy brought down on them. The use of the mummy as a monster works well, grafted onto the journey metaphors, but it also works well in terms of an exploration, or goal-oriented metaphor. Both of those come without the rigid, militant ranking system and without the paternalism or the violence inherent in the martial metaphors. It also allows the patient to have far more agency in their own treatment and care, even if it is only internally.
Both the dinosaur and the mummy as monsters have a basis in historical fact, and so they both graft well onto metaphors which also have a basis in fact. Martial states and journeys all exist in the real world, but Psychopathological metaphors and “Eating” metaphors don’t have such easy, real-world analogues. To produce new dynamics with those metaphors, Morgan had to look to the monsters of myth and literature.
            The final two monsters examined by Gorgo and Beau are dragons, and the Great Eye of Sauron. Both work well with theoretical metaphors like Psyopathology and “Eating”, and both tap into the literary tradition of the “Hero’s Journey”, which differentiates from journey metaphors because of the specificity of the Hero’s Journey. Going to pick up a carton of milk is a journey; defeating a (Catholic) dragon after getting spit out by a giant snake-woman named Error, all for a princess is a Hero’s journey(Spenser 1.1.14-20, 1.12.52-55 ). There is a sense of epic scale and high stakes that is simply not present in vanilla journey metaphors, which is why they pair so well with dragons.
            The first of the two literary monsters referenced comes straight out of Tolkien: Sauron’s Great Eye. Gorgo makes the first reference to this monster, when he is taunting Beau about the oncogene: “The oncogene, the oncogene, it squats in the DNA/ As proud and mim as a paddock, and will not go away” (Morgan 60). The OED defines “oncogene” as “A gene whose products may in certain circumstances transform a cell containing them into a tumor cell” (OED oncogene). The oncogene referenced by Gorgo is then implicit in the long, mobius-strip tumor in the young girl, which then escalates into “A nucleus too gigantic for the cell,/ Ragged, pulsing, encroaching, a bloodshot eye/ Staring at a wreckage of filaments and blobs,/ Bursting with DNA, breaking apart” (Morgan 61). As previously stated, this description is eerily similar to the description of Sauron’s Great Eye, and the effects on the cancer/patient are much the same. On the surface, it seems like the Eye has all the agency and the patient must sit passive as their cells are destroyed. However, the Eye exists in a literary structure, and cancer narrative metaphors are being rewritten by Morgan. By affiliating the cancer and patient with the Eye and therefore with Frodo, the agency then rests not on the oncogene that is the “One Ring”, but on the decision “Frodo” makes for his care and treatment. Frodo’s journey in The Lord of the Rings is certainly a hero’s journey and the journey of cancer patients maps onto that journey very, very neatly. There is the patient him/herself, the best friend or primary emotional support (this may be a parent, sibling, spouse, whomever) and a fellowship of doctors and specialists.
            Once again, we see this structure change the base of the agency. If cancer is a foe that needs to be overthrown, then even an inexperienced, fish-out-of-water character like Frodo can be heroic enough and possess the agency to defeat the foe. He also has a fellowship of doctors and specialists who are there to support, advise, and guide him. For cancer patients, this puts the agency and the decision-making power back in their own hands, rather than being at the whim of a general (martial metaphors) or the wind or fate (journey metaphors). Psychopathological metaphor here is shown to work exceptionally well, particularly when mixed with a literary Hero’s Journey.
            Finally, Morgan comes to the oldest monsters in literature: the Dragon. When Morgan references dragons, he is speaking of them in direct reference to New Age-y treatments where the patient is meant to visualize the cancerous cells as dragons to defeat, or as grapes that slowly shrivel away to nothing (Morgan 62). While conventional medicine (Ulrich 84-85), and even Gorgo and Beau themselves (Morgan 62) doubt the veracity of visualization as a treatment for a disease, the metaphoric use of putting the face of a dragon on a tumor and metaphorically armoring oneself up to defeat the dragon has merits.
            The foundation of this metaphor is inherently martial, yet it lacks many of the political issues that come with a real-world connection to war; the enemy is a mythical creature, not another human being, and rather than being bullet fodder, the patient is the knight in shining armor, giving the orders and battling for a concrete goal. There isn’t the troubling aspect of paternalism; nobody else is fighting the dragon on your behalf, and in “best interests” that may or may not actually be yours. The dragon is yours, and therefore (argues Morgan), the how and why of the battling is up to you. The fear factor is lowered by putting a face on the nameless thing devouring you, and therefore instead of the inherent passivity of the “Eating” metaphors, patients can reclaim their agency. Morgan has taken Martial and “Eating” metaphors, melded them together, and subverted both, simply with the addition of a dragon. In this way, the same metaphors that have been used to describe the cancer experience have been reproduced, but in such a way that the reproduction redefines the balance of power between patient, disease, and interested parties.
            Once Morgan has dealt with the dragon and the last of his new power dynamics, Gorgo and Beau come back to the forefront of the poem, reminding the reader that the poem is actually a conversation, and now a conversation winding down. While the opening of the poem was taunting, focused and narrow; at the conclusion, both Gorgo and Beau expand their views, both in terms of time and in terms of breadth of subject. Medical science and literature and technology and armies and time are all briefly touched upon in terms of the underlying martial metaphor that the poem is couched in, and Beau eventually cuts the conversation short, saying “We shall surely speak again. Arrivederci” (Morgan 64). It is this end, this very natural end to a conversation that makes “Gorgo and Beau” less of a poem, less even of a conversation, than a performance of two ideals that has been going on through time, and will continue to go on. The very form of the poem allows Morgan to reproduce metaphors that have been used before, and will surely be used again, but not simply repeat them; Morgan is able to alter the internal power dynamic of those old metaphors. By his example and the framing conversation of Gorgo and Beau allows those dynamics to continue to be dynamic; they will continue to change and adapt with time and advances in medical science and care.
Conclusion
            Over the course of this essay, we have examined the historical roots of both Morgan’s monsters and his metaphors. We have seen how equating a literary monster with a scientific phenomenon changes the balance of power in a long-standing metaphor. Edwin Morgan has managed once again to incorporate elements from cutting-edge science and technology, as well as themes and characters from the oldest surviving manuscripts to say something new and culturally relevant about both. All in all, “Gorgo and Beau” is a masterpiece of metaphor manipulation and a song of hope for patients of all kinds.
Works Cited
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Spenser, Edmund. “The Faerie Queen”. Edmund Spenser’s Poetry: A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Hugh MaClean, Anne Lake Prescott. 3rd ed. WW Norton and Co. New York, New York. 1993. Print.
Teucher, Ulrich C. “Writing the Unspeakable: Metaphor in Cancer Narratives”. Diss. U of British Columbia, 1993. MLA International Bibliography. 14 April 2014. Web.
Thomson, Dorthe Kirkegarrd., Anders Bonde Jenson. “Memories and Narratives about Breast Cancer: Exploring Associations between Turning Points, Distress and Meaning”. Narrative Inquiry. 17:2 (2007), 349–370. MLA International Bibliography. 14 April 2014. Web.
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forestempty · 2 days
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I've lost count of how many times you've apologised. You cradle my head and tell me you're sorry again and it doesn't mean a thing. I look at you and feel completely empty.
We stand in the cold and inch away from one another. If I am to change then perhaps I am also to grow away from you. It confuses me that I can feel so alone when I am loved so much.
A new season begins. A crow eats the seeds I left for her on the windowsill. She turns to speak to me but I don’t understand. I ask her name and she only stares.
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felltheadequate · 2 months
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A Burns Night Post
Hello all! Today is January 25th, the birthday of poet and songwriter Robert Burns, Scotland's national poet. He's sadly not very well-known in the US, and that's a real shame. Yeah, we know Auld Lang Syne, but very few people could name its composer. Each year, on this night, a celebration is held in his honor; as I'm not able to attend or hold one, this post will have to do.
I'm quite new to poetry in general, but Burns' works have taken me in their thrall since I read them. They have informed my own writing, as you will likely pick up if you scroll through my posts here. He wrote in both English and a light variation of the Scots language, which allows those with no exposure to the tongue to mostly understand what he's saying. It makes everything accessible while still retaining the beauty of an unfortunately unknown (and at worst mocked and erased) language that's been alive for centuries.
I'm not the one to talk about this much more in-depth, so I direct you instead to some resources to look into on both the man and his compositions if you're interested:
https://guides.library.sc.edu/c.php?g=410366&p=2796572
http://www.robertburns.org.uk/robertburns_resources.htm
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victusinveritas · 20 days
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Wolf
Edwin Morgan
Published in Virtual and Other Realities (Carcanet, 1997)
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ahpoems · 8 months
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Memory Loss.
On forgetting; willfully or not.
I have a really bad memory.
I don’t remember the way you gave me butterflies when we were up all night talking. Or how the way I’d get a buzz when your name lit up my phone. Or how I’d write in my notes all the things you said that I couldn’t bare to forget.
I don’t remember how I was so nervous for our first date. Or how I spent hours mulling over the perfect place to take you. Or how the time flew by and we overstayed our welcome.
I don’t remember excitedly telling the people I loved how I’d found someone to add to my intertwined circle of lives held together by the need for company. Or how they thought it was great for me to put myself out there. Or how every time something would go wrong, they’d say I think I like him less now.
I don’t remember when it switched from talking all of the time to never hearing from you. Or how I’d tell my friends all of the amazing things I loved about you while you were unreachable. Or how I spent nights lying awake wondering if you ignored me for weeks on purpose.
I don’t remember feeling resentful that I only got to speak to you when you wanted me to. Or how my friends worried. Or how I saw the flags flying and wanted to persevere.
I don’t remember the last night I saw you. Or how you made me feel. Or how I made you feel.
I don’t remember the texting, the phone calls and the unopened snapchats. Or the notes app full of unsent responses. Or the millions of times I’ve had the conversation with you in my head.
And I think, the point I’m trying to make is maybe not remembering makes the memories taste better. Or maybe that it was doomed to fail from the start. Or that I still feel you against all of the pieces of me.
But I don’t remember.
A.H.
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abirbbrain · 2 months
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Love, forget me when I’m gone,
When the tree is overthrown,
Let its place be digg’d and sown
O’er with grass ;—when that is grown,
The very place shall be unknown,
So court I oblivion.
So I charge thee, by our love,
Love, forget me when I’m gone.
Love of him that lies in clay
Only maketh life forlorn—
Clouding o’er the new-born day
With regrets of yester morn.
And what is love of him that’s low,
Or sunshine on his grave that floats?
Love nor sunshine reacheth now
Deeper that the daisy roots.
So, when he that nigh me hovers—
Death—that spares not happy lovers—
Comes to claim his little due,
Love—as thou art good and true—
Proudly give the churl his own,
And forget me when I’m gone.
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moodymeangirl · 11 months
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“i came back from the hotel where you turned and said to me {deborah greenwood vocals} white bars of heaven keeping me from you i know you're living in hell, but what can I do? (she said) {leven & greenwood} white bars of heaven keeping me from you i know you're living in hell, but what can I do? {chorus} i stood under the shattered stars and watched the drunks fall by...” from Exit Wound, by Jackie Leven (ft Deborah Greenwood)
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poem-today · 10 months
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A poem by George Mackay Brown
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Old Fisherman with Guitar
A formal exercise for withered fingers.     The head is bent,         The eyes half closed, the tune Lingers         And beats, a gentle wing the west had thrown     Against his breakwater wall with salt savage lament.
So fierce and sweet the song on the plucked string,     Know now for truth         Those hands have cut from the net The strong         Crab-eaten corpse of Jock washed from a boat     One old winter, and gathered the mouth of Thora to his mouth.
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George Mackay Brown (1921-1996)
Author Photo: © Jessie Ann Matthew
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