Trashochists Present: Robert Lowell, read by Vik Vimes
from The Trashochists' Guide Hosted by Four Trashketeers
Trashochists Present is an ongoing supplement to The Trashochists' Guide to Modern Shiterature. Each episode will be a simple read-through of a given Trashketeer's choice of poem or other piece of text. In this very first episode, Vik Vimes reads his favourite poem of all time, "To Speak of the Woe that is in Marriage", by Robert Lowell. Additional notes and trivia: -The structure of the poem is that of a sonnet; it rhymes in a smooth, casual AABBCC... format, and includes a feature called a 'turn', wherein the last two lines of the sonnet flip and reframe the rest of the poem thematically. -Vimes likes to picture the narrator of this poem as a burnt-out housewife, sick of her selfish husband and yet not quite able to leave him. Their relationship seems to be toxic, and she is desperate for physical contact and affection even from him. He can picture her wearing curlers and a ratty bathrobe, smoking a cheap cigarette on her front porch while she speaks with a friend. -"To speak of the woe that is in marriage" is a line lifted directly from The Wife of Bath's Tale, by Geoffrey Chaucer. This, too, is a text narrated by a sharp yet weary woman, and a very fitting title for this sonnet.
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