The gullible often look at this as being something deep. And the trendy tend to use it to reveal the deeper truths that lie behind the committee thinking of the 'liberal consensus'.
As someone who is happily married - well we would be if hetrosexualists hadn't forbidden civil partnership as an option - with three kids, I can vouch for the power of words correctly applied.
The missus and I met at a poetry gig in a working men's club (and you don't get more Room at the Top than that), and after a bit of cat dance, she wooed as surely and firmly as Cyrano de Bergerac. It's funny look back on it. Because there we were at the local poetry group, her at one end of the table, I at the other. The read round began. Frank with his marvelously seductive nature poetry, John with his Guardian reading sensibility oozing through his text, me with some piece of whimsy; and on the wheel turned in the candle light. Until it got to the missus.
Her poem was simplicity itself, A list of tell tales signs that she had fallen in love - a workmate noticing she wore brighter lipstick - was the line that sticks in my head. It's an odd feeling to be on the end of such a direct invitation. A heartfelt missive. A cry from the heart if you will.
When she had finished, the discussion centred upon the the perceived feminist message of the poem, and how all the items listed, and the situations described, were indicative of the patriarchal oppression of women. But as I sipped my beer, and toked my rollie, I fixed the missus with a beady eye, unable to move because of the erection.
Another example that sticks in my mind, is a Kathy Benson poem about her grandmother's house. In it she mentions the clocks. I was instantly transported to my grandma's, where on the hour, every hour, the clocks up and down her street would chime over the space of three minutes.
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Random picture to keep the Facebook interesting....
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