A Sense of Doubt blog post #1827 - “Lying Down With Men and Women” by John Woods, a poem

https://medium.com/philosophistry/are-humans-the-most-evolved-species-8f8c6027e0e1

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1827 - “Lying Down With Men and Women” by John Woods, a poem

Added commentary in video: 2007.09 15:20.

Here's my post for my creative writing class today. I was going to do more commentary with it, but I decided to keep it simple.

I was sad to see that this poem is not on the Internet, at least not in an initial search of title and author.

Well, now it is. ;-)

John Woods was a great poet, just to get those key words explicitly together.

SUBJECT: IMAGERY - “Lying Down With Men and Women” by John Woods 

Greetings writers, in my ongoing series on extra posts, one of my favorite poems of all time by one of my favorite writers and former teacher, a poet who was well known among poets and not so much outside of poetry circles but should have been poet laureate given how many people he influenced.

I had intended to write commentary on the poem, but now I just want it to speak for itself, for now. Maybe you comment or maybe  I comment later.

I will share that I think this is a good example of themed imagery and of having a killer last line.

Please share what you think.



“Lying Down With Men and Women”
by John Woods

When we came up from water, our eyes
drew to the front of our heads,
and we had faces. When we came up
on our knuckles, we held fruit to our mouths,
and wanted to know the chemistry
of sweetness.
Then as we walked down
the earth’s curve, trees and hills
got in our way, so we moved them
for roads and newsprint and wreckage.

Part of every day, the water mood and the tree mood
rise in our bodies, and we must
lie down a bit to honor our lost
tails and gills.
When we lie on our backs,
we see so far away we try to give names to light,
like wild dogs we have taught
to lick our hands.
And when we lie on our faces,
we see too close, the blank wall
at the end of the corridor.
And so
we lie down with men and women
because we are terrified, and sometimes,
for that reason, we stand up and kill.




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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2002.18 - 10:10

- Days ago = 1690 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.