January is the month of decisions, is it not. Like for example, getting rid of the Christmas version of the blog to bring it back to the crisp whiteness. And to clearing the decks of last year's papers and entrails. But it never seems to happen like that and stuff lingers, hangs around, stubbornly refusing to be shifted. So with plans for the New Year well in place, new books to write and papers to edit and articles to write I should be surfing the keyboard. But I am not, the dreaded lurgy lingers still and there is still tidying to be done. And then there is the Icarus dilemma. At this time of year we crave flight, the soaring to new heights, with new promise and renewed hopes while still being shackled to King Minos' wrath for allowing Ariadne to assist Theseus. Though our esteemed Poet Laureate may have it differently in this (not her best poem) Mrs IcarusI’m not the first or the last
to stand on a hillock,
watching the man she married
prove to the world
he’s a total, utter, absolute Grade A pillock.
Though, in the Brueghel spirit, why is Carol Anne Duffy's Mrs Icarus standing watching while the men are working - does she expects him to fall, no matter how hard he tries to impress he will always be her pillock. And despite her efforts to love him he has his grand schemes. But its a terribly weighted poem, surely. She the bedrock, the solid equal in the face of Icarus' grand schemes - and I guess me reading standing up doesn't impress either. Which I guess is the point of the poem, not great for either sex methinks, for it suggests the poor plight of men all over the world, we are born to it (grand schemes/grand failure) so I guess we should just admit that we spend our lives like birds, preening our mating feathers, showing off in front of other would be suitors, looking to impress, not knowing that all the time she was already trying to treat us as equals in the nest; and when the time comes they too would fly with us. Actually, though, that is me trying to rescue her poem which could only have been written by a woman who doesn't seem to have much time for men at all. For surely not all flights of male fancy result in failure and sometimes we are only a short step away from the top of the hillock as opposed to being a pillock - and it need not just be men who take the step. Time for the Sisters of Mercy, methinks:
