Circling Round Woman

By Arlene Corwin

"Generally speaking, my collections 'circle' around something, providing me with a wide berth for treatment. So with the exception of the few things of which I have more certainty, as in my collections A Sense of The Ridiculous' or I Is Always You Is Me.--certainties which don't need a prefix verb, the subject of woman demands circling around it. 'Woman' means half the planetary population. I would hope to reach all ages but I suspect that this particular collection will speak most to the mature woman, the woman who has begun to notice her aging processes."

As in To The Child Mystic (Authorhouse), Circling Round Woman is an unintentional memoir-cum-instruction book in poetic form: sharply observational, pragmatic, personal; nonchalantly, funnily and unscientifically scientific. Women friends of the author have commented that some of the poems have changed their lives, they being able to identify themselves with the theme. "When you can identify with a thing, you feel its universality and you feel accepted", say Ms Corwin.

Circling Round Woman is concrete; easy reading, deep reading; philosophical and playful all at once. Circling Round Woman makes you laugh, cry and remember. It reminds you of who you are and what you are becoming.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 5, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462846993

Arlene Corwin

Arlene Corwin is a professional jazz singer/pianist, yoga practitioner of some 40 years, and author of 11 previous books, each circling round some singular aspect of life. A graduate of the High School of Music & Art and Hofstra University, she lives, performs and teaches in Sweden.

Book preview

Copyright © 2011 by Arlene Corwin.

Front cover art by Neson Zancato.

Back cover photo by Ulf Magnusson.

ISBN:          Softcover                                 978-1-4628-4698-6

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4628-4699-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

98135

98135-CORW-layout-low.pdf

Contents

Preface Notes

A Biological Consideration

A Little Bit Of Something Wrong

A Tad Unjust

A Woman Involved

Advice To A Beleaguered Mother

Advice To Wives Who Wait At Home

Advice To Women Who Have Boyfriends Twelve Years Younger

After Dinner Speech In Celebration Of Women

After The Bath Song

Age Fixated

Aging Hormones

Ageing Orgasm

All At The Same Time

All Categories In One

An Affair Is A Harrowing Thing

Anything Done Any Which Way

Basically

Beauty Gone

Become A Stage (And Let Age Rage)

Blobhood

Body Historian

Body My Enemy

Body Talk

Brown Spot Showing

Butter On My Turtleneck

Catching Up

Celebration Of Admission’s Boast

Changing Forms

Chasing The Rose

Coming To Terms

Complaint From An Ageing Computer-Illiterate Lady

Confirmations

Continuous Breakdown

Cousin Roz

Crossroad

Daughters Or Sons

Diary

Different Angles, Different Lights

Do You Really Want to Peel Your Face?

Dubious Sexuality

Even Pain Takes A Rest

Everyone’s Titties

Everything Evens Out Part When

Everything Gets Old

Existential Crisis

Face Expert

First Things First

Flabby Arms

Get It Out Of Your System

Going, Going, Gone

Gone

Hallelujah For The Older Woman

Happy Birthday Me

Have I Any Reason To Fear?

How Do You Come To Grips With Age?

How Not To Save Money

How Sexist Can You Get?

I Can’t Keep Thinking About

I Do Not Recognize

I See Through Everything

I Waited

I’m Such A Fool

Inventory

It All Evens Out

It’s Readiness

It’s Those Cycles Again

It’s Not Me It’s My Hormones

Justify Your Life

Last Vanity

Let Age Rage

Looking In The Mirror

Losing Interest

Mae West

Memorandum

Mirror

More Examination Observation

More Wrinkles

My Am Is Mother

My Am Is Mother #1

My Am Is Mother #2

My Am Is Mother #3

My Am Is Mother #4

My Am Is Mother

My Middle Name Is Faith

Never The Same Again

New Year Morning 2000

No One Remembers How You Looked

Nobody Sleeps

Not Often Dear, But When

Observer Again

One Step Higher In My Views

Our Secret

Our Sex Life Is Changing

Passing Thoughts Of A Bridesmaid Come From A Wedding

Perfect Portrait

Plastic Faces

Platinum Blonde Conundrum

Plucking Eyebrows In The Sun

Prayer Of A Developing Recluse

Pushed Around By Fate

Rambling Rose

Sadhana For Too Much Talk

Sadhana For Vanity

Series Growth

Seventy And Two #2

Seventy-Two #1

She Is A Mouse

She Slept With Every Man

Sixty

Sixty-Two: Observing The Changes

Slipping Into A Slot #1

Slipping Into A Slot #2

Some Women Have Lots Of Sex

Tendency

The Beauty’s Gone

The Clock Runs Down

The Coming Is Going

The Defining Line

The Final Cut

The Kitchen Needs Reorganizing

The Last Straw(s)

The Leaver & Leftee

The Magic Ray

The Nicer Sides Of Being Ignored

The Only Jazz Bass Playing Lady I Know

The Perfect Portrait

The Sale

The Smallest Decision

The Story Behind My Haircut

The Womb

The World Is Easily Fooled

The Clock Runs Down

They Look With Their Age

Things Get Dirty

To All The Girls Who Plasticize

To Obedience

Trading Beauty For Convenience

Two Women On A Beach

Victims Of Numbers

What Works

Who Cares, What Cares?

Who’da Thought?

Without Him I’m Nothing

Woman

Wrinkles Round The Mouth

Year Of The Moustache

Yet More Wrinkles

Preface Notes

6.23.2011

There’s always this problem of using the pronoun I. If I didn’t believe that this I was all-of-us in-one, I wouldn’t allow myself to use it. I is meant to be identified with.

Therefore, I urge the reader time and again to look for his me in the I.

We always pick out what applies to our lives specific to the moment, or overall.

Two people coming out of the theatre have not seen the same play. Two people meeting someone for the first time have not met the same person.

I’d forgotten that I’d written a poem about Whitman before: the virtues of a bad memory. Reading him this morning, (with its inspired preface to the Signet Classic edition 1955), and observing its layout, I was myself inspired. I wrote:

           Why have I not read Whitman in depth earlier? Perhaps it was the patriotism—all that America, all that passion.—those detailed lists and descriptions. At 19, I was not ready, at 72 I was looking for other things in the verse. Perhaps it was our dissimilar destinies, mine taking me around the globe, his pasting him to America and all things American. ‘Twin’ souls, I seem to recall writing once, undergoing corresponding struggles; parallel developments in many ways. Or perhaps it’s simply that the same things strike us as new in certain moments.

           At any rate, I am once more overwhelmed by his mystical feel for the whole. Renewed, encouraged and freed. Freed to explain my poems with little notes in smaller fonts. Free to use the pronoun I. Small things the reader may think. A poet never explains, I used to think. (The poem should be self-explanatory, on a higher plane, explanations seeming more apology then communication).

           Now past the age he lived and died—no stroke, no visible infirmities, I may have more to give if unknown karma lets me. Most worries and inhibitions evaporated, fresh approaches reaching out from his pages, I’m braver.

           Skimming him in college, much too young to ‘get’ him, picking up the Leaves now and again through the years and not quite comprehending why it were a classic, I now think I may have been him in a former life—not really, but a nice image. Especially because he legitimized the use of I.

6.30.2011