Esoteric Lucubrations

Exercise, Anne Sexton
EXERCISE: Thanks so much to everyone commenting on my two recent posts!

aqueri, in the more recent, agreed supportively that dance--spontaneous movement to music--is good for a person emotionally and spiritually as well as physically. I had said that I'd stopped doing it at all because of being too out of shape, but I realized & replied to her:

It's not just strength etc.--it's almost as though I've mostly lost the whole concept of expressing myself through motion (except during sex); I do think I'm getting that back while treadmilling to a good song, feeling and enjoying the rhythm in my body, especially the solar plexus area. I actually made my neck a bit sore tossing my head to "Shock the Monkey"! If I'd almost lost this feeling, then I really do need to be doing this, not just for the diabetes. In fact, I think things like this loss are what we think of as "growing old," and here it may not be necessary at all.

This (& great comments by

porcinea) made me think that (1) I need to include more dance-type exercise as well as treadmilling, though not right away, and (2) a dance icon might be better than the exercycle one. Or both types. Fortunately, I already have dancing pigs & this dancing rodent.

ANNE SEXTON: Due to Peter Gabriel's song "Mercy Street," I've been reading some of Anne Sexton's poetry and--wow! Yeah, I'm coming to it late, but through my thirties an early forties I was much, much more familiar with 17th- and 19th-century poetry than with recent poetry. I read Plath a while ago, both poetry and biography; oddly, I then read about Sexton's life but never picked up the poems. This may be because Plath was good but did not knock my socks off. Sexton leave me with not only bare feet but also tingly toes!

Alas, even though Sexton is fascinated by the palindrome "rats live on no evil star," her symbolic use of rats is ambivalent, even as bad things. Duh--clearly NO evil star means rats are NEVER evil!

womzilla sagely observed, "When it comes to rats, many have had an education of evil."

Seriously though, the poems I have read so far are well crafted, strong, and never whiny (which I do think Plath's poetry sometimes is). Sometimes a phrase will just stop me short; and I have had to pause after reading a few poems because of their sheer power, a literary response I rarely have (though I did to All Hallows Eve, cementing my admiration of Charles Williams's novels).

Mood: relaxed & chatty but need to get ready for work