Middlesex

Unbosoming

Michael Field

The love that breeds 
In my heart for thee!
As the iris is full, brimful of seeds,
And all that it flowered for among the reeds
Is packed in a thousand vermilion-beads
That push, and riot, and squeeze, and clip, 
Till they burst the sides of the silver scrip,
And at last we see
What the bloom, with its tremulous, bowery fold
Of zephyr-petal at heart did hold:
So my breast is rent
With the burthen and strain of its great content;
For the summer of fragrance and sighs is dead,
The harvest-secret is burning red,
And I would give thee, after my kind,
The final issues of heart and mind.





There's some "Song of Solomon" here, some naughty but tasteful "Kama Sutra," maybe a little "Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam." But whether you find it erotic or not, there's some class, some charm and some real poetry going on here. 


"That push, and riot, and squeeze, and clip,/Till they burst the sides of the silver scrip..." 


You can't really argue that the man has some real talent.


Michael Field was not a man. He was two women, Katherine Harris Bradley and her niece and ward Edith Emma Cooper, who wrote and lived together. Hailed as a new Shakespearian voice in drama and poetry by the critics, they confided their secret to friend and mentor Robert Browning. Who naturally proceeded to spill the beans. Is there anything those Brownings can't ruin?


There's a lot of bandying about as to whether they were actually lesbians and how far their relationship went. Predictably the more pruriently prudish Victorian voices harrumph a lot and protest loudly that it's quite impossible, while the Queer Studies majors chuckle that anyone could question it. 


Personally: don't know, don't care. The poetry is pretty fantastic, especially for the turn of the century for some ladies from Bristol. This is the same era that gave us "The Tay Bridge Disaster," after all. There's some Georgia O'Keefe in here, some "Vagina Monologues," but it's amazing to me how the reading of the poem changes when you change the gender of the speaker.