Two unpublished poems by Angela Carter in last weekend's Observer. The one I have copied below is not online, only in actual newspaper:
Untitled
My cat
Is the snow queen,
This frigid virgin four
Winters old crooks
Her paw to wash a face
White
As starlight, twice
As cold.
She puts back
her ears like spoons
to listen to the wind
behind her.
She eats
For breakfast, hearts;
For supper, northern lights.
Mid-1960s
'She puts back/her ears like spoons/to listen to the wind/behind her'
I absolutely love that line, just love it.
Untitled
My cat
Is the snow queen,
This frigid virgin four
Winters old crooks
Her paw to wash a face
White
As starlight, twice
As cold.
She puts back
her ears like spoons
to listen to the wind
behind her.
She eats
For breakfast, hearts;
For supper, northern lights.
Mid-1960s
'She puts back/her ears like spoons/to listen to the wind/behind her'
I absolutely love that line, just love it.
6 comments:
Thanks for posting this, it's great. I've been meaning for awhile to read some Angela Carter. Now I am even more interested.
gorgeous!
thank you so much for posting!
i follow you, tho I dont say much...but, i'm here. and i appreciate all that you have to say, admire your intelligence & your toughness.)
--susan
Charming and surprising!
love it.
I have never read Angela Carter's fiction, one of those writers I feel terribly guilty for not having got to yet. But this poem, that line, it just wrapped itself around me and made me feel happy. I said the words out loud a few times... Susan, Thanks for your very lovely compliment, though I think I may come across as tougher than I feel, at times. There is fragility beneath the feistiness and the recent nonsense dressed up as science re. my illness has left me feeling quite broken. But then you read a line like 'she puts back her ears like spoons' and all is good with the world.
Yes, that line spoke to me: this before I noticed that we were in concurrence.
I have trouble with poetry. It's not that I don't appreciate it, but I have trouble interpreting so much of it, it's like a blind spot I have: so it's nice when a line like that just shines through.
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