Section 2 > Exercise 6 > Clinical prose vs. sexual poetry
Set 2
Read the following 2 texts and answer the questions below.
Anatomy text: The vagina, the female organ of copulation, is a musculomembranous tube (usually 7-9 cm in length) which forms the inferior portion of the female genital tract and birth canal. In the anatomical position the vagina descends anteroposteriorly from the rectouterine pouch. Its anterior and posterior walls are normally in apposition except at its superior end, where the cervix of the uterus enters its cavity. The vagina communicates superiorly with the cavity of the uterus and opens inferiorly into the vestibule of the vagina between the labia minora. A thin fold of mucous membrane, the hymen, surrounds the vaginal orifice. After childbirth, the hymen usually consists of only tabs. Keith Moore Clinically oriented anatomy
The woman's genitals
Haydn Carruth
Oh this world and oh this dear worldbody
See how it had become become become
How it has flowered and how it has put on gaudy
Appearances how it is a plum
In its ripening in its reddening a berry
In its glittering a finch in its throbbing a cowry
In its extraordinary allusiveness a night
Of midsummer in its fragrance a tide
In its deepsurging and a dark woodland spring
In its concealing sources
See how it is velvety how its innerness clings
And presses how nearly it repulses
How it then takes and cherishes how it is austere
How it is free how it reviles abuses
And how it is here and how it was always here
Hayden Carruth, From Contra Mortem Permission requested/Pending
Discussion Questions
Compare and contrast these two writings.
- What is the purpose of each? Think of the audience. Think of the conventionally determined appropriateness of the subject matter for an anatomy text as opposed to for a poem.
- Are the female genitals an object or a subject for the writers of each piece? (See note immediately below) This question refers to the distance of the writers from their subject matter and well as the attitude expressed towards it.
Note: An object is someone or something 'out there.' A person generally has no emotional relationship with an object, which is generally inanimate, meaning that when a person is 'objectified,' he or she is not really seen as a fellow human being. A 'subject' is someone or something who participates in a person's subective consciousness. For example, think of the expression, 'getting under one's skin.' It means that a person is deeply or intimately affected by something. Thus, a subject implies a shared perspective of consciousness.
- Explain how Carruth's phrase 'its extraordinary allusiveness' is a metaphor for the whole poem. Comment on the differences in the scope of the language, as well as the scope of the meanings evoked in each text. Hint: what references are there in the Carruth poem to space and time? Are these concepts invoked in the anatomy text? Why or why not?
- Are either of these writings offensive? Why or why not? What can you learn from these writings about thinking and talking about such intimate matters as sexual organs? How in general do doctors and other health care professionals deal with sexual intimacy?
Annotation
(Link quote in Dr.-Pt Unit)
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