It was “about breeding.”. Breeding yes, I flashed the thought of all the deaths

and the need to renew, replenish hope in the coming generation.

Sadie said, “yes, good breeding: understood art,

elegant food, fine clothes, a master of savoir faire”

then the doorbell, hands extended

greetings, gossipy groups assembled sipping

wine, telling secrets

and music began. Symbolically crossing my fingers I was left to myself

to embroider the dangling threads of her tale, thresh out the gothic novel

romance writing the tearjerker of Sadie’s year that year.

Exercise 11. Read, translate, and transcribe the poem by C. Levin. Underline all proper names. Pronounce them over and over:

Beholders Eye the Pageant

(1921)

First, Queen Margaret followed by look alikes: Mary, Fay, Rose, Bette, Jean, Bess, Venus and Nevea, Lee, and the famous BeBe. A Suzette and a Kayleen, several Susans and later, Kellye Cash and Kay Lani Rae Rafko. Sovereigns of “Beauty”.

(1948)

The year she was crowned in a gown rather than a swimsuit raised news reporter’s hackles so the un-comely runners-up, (“in good health and of the white race”) gave in, posed in silhouette suits. Tapered high heels contracted their calves, their smiles obliged while the song composed in an hour played on for years. “Here She Comes Miss America”.

(1968)

A vast boardwalk lies between the Atlantic City Convention Center and the incandescent beauty of the Atlantic ocean strutting its tides accompanied by “women libbers” singing “Ain’t she sweet: making profits off her meat”. A manifesto announces “No More degrading mindless-boob-girlie symbols” and Feminists argue for: abortion, minimum pay and self-defense. All eyes rise to the pedestal of beauty for the kickoff event, an orchestrated ruckus around receptacles in which to toss copies of The Ladies Home Journal, Playboy, false eyelashes, dish detergent, wigs, curlers, girdles and high heels. “Ludicrous beauty standards we ourselves are conditioned to take seriously” and the media eats it up.

(1978,88,2008)

The nineteen seventy-eight perfectly named Perkins

was a Susan. In eighty-eight,

Social Relevance appeared

In the birdcage

of women facing faces

In the face of “what counts

for commerce counts

It’s pennies”. In o-eight

at Planet Hollywood, a gambling

casino, perfectly placed in man’s

tinsel invention of illusion

are perishable artworks

and mophead hydrangeas,

parrot tulips with roses

arranged loosely and naturally

to show everything off.

(rule number seven in the Miss America Rule book stated that "contestants must be of good health and of the white race."). entrants needed to prove their biological history changed in 1970

Unit six

Exercise 1. Read, translate and transcribe the following poem by American poet Carol Levin from the collection “Place one foot here”. Write down all unknown words into your dictionary. Use them in sentences of your own:

Future Artist in Athens 1968

I want to go back.

At the Acropolis hot summer

is suspended forever

above marble reflecting the sun.

With my prominent sculptor

I trudged convoluted roads

from Syntagma Square, past the Plaka

to stand in awe on that dry

crumbly crest.

He greeted

the nine Muses, his chiseled,

poised, confidants, as I

shifted my gaze to evade

their time-worn fixed eyes.

Who?

You know, the Muses he elbowed.

Unenlightened

I put up a false front.

I want to go back

to those nine graceful

figures, faces partially crumbled

by time. But time

is suspended

between us, I can barely

envision them there.

Daily, now, I want to go back

because I am burning to know:

What?

Which one is mine?

Exercise 2. Make up a list of fish species according to the model in exercise 2, Unit 1.Read, translate and transcribe each word on the list. Repeat for clarity of articulation. Work for precision with a minimum of tension. After you have accurately mastered the phrases for clarity, work for speed in repetition. Use the terms in sentences of your own.

Exercise 3. Listen, read, translate, and transcribe the following poem by Carol Levin. Repeat the nouns over and over. Accuracy first, the speed!

Parthenon at the Acropolis Above Athens

By its dynamics

it was going to entice us

to the top

stumbling

on loose

rocks losing ourselves

in a field of ancient stars.

It was going to be missing

its roof

because of the September 1687

explosion of the Ottoman Empire’s

gun powder.

It was going

to compel us to stand

inside cooling

our fingertips:

again and again

on worn smooth

white marble.

From inside it was going

to feel like we were

ants looking out at

some other world.

Below the doric

columns on winding

backstreets as well as boulevards

past universities and offices

of power,

it was going to be a year

we were touched by

an explosion in culture

here and everywhere

It was going to be routine

for students to burn

draft cards, flags,

old family ties,

some would take off

their clothes, let down

their hair, sing songs of revolution.

Parthenon at the Acropolis Above Athens

moon authority.

It was going to change

Everything

and forty years later

people diverse

as George, Glenna, Ann,

Beth and Rob

were going to be able

to instantly recount

where they were that

summer:

death, divorce, despair

and love

on planet earth

in nineteen-sixty-eight.

For any of us it’s true

we don’t know,

but what we would tell you

now is, before you stumble

when some oracle is

crystal-gazing

a rose-colored future,

watch closely

to augur the flap

of the butterfly’s

wings, as it’s been said, it’s their wind

changes the global order.

Exercise 4. Discuss the poem with your neighbour. Cite the author’s lines. Remember that you are not in competition with anyone, and that you will progress at your own rate. Make a recording of the way you sound as you begin your studies, and then make a comparison, recording every six to twelve months.

Exercise 5. Transcribe the lines below. Repeat them over and over. Produce the phrases with distinctness. Pay your special attention to the bilabial sounds & labiodentals (voiced and voiceless):

Love me tender, love me sweet,

Never let me go.

You have made y life complete

And I love you so.

Love me tender, love me true,

All my dreams fulfill,

For, my darling I love you

And I always will.

Exercise 6. Listen and decode the whole song. Sing it together with the singer.

Exercise 7. Read, translate and transcribe the proverbs below. Work for precision with a minimum of tension. After you have accurately mastered the phrases for clarity, work for speed in repetition:

Where is life there is hope.

When in Rome, do as Romans do.

Exercise 8. Imagine you and your friend are at the party. Look through the text of Exercise 10, Unit 5. Make up a dialogue; add more adjectives to describe your favourite books, use more proper names. Repeat them for clarity of articulation.

Exercise 9. You are going to buy a car. Discuss your decision with your friends. Speak on the colours and makes. Repeat your dialogue for clarity of articulation.

Exercise 10. Describe the street (the town) where you live (visited). Look through the text of the exercise 3, Unit 5.

Exercise 11. Read, translate, and transcribe the poem by C. Levin. Write down the unknown words into your dictionary. Give comparative and superlative of adjectives:

Looking Through the Transparent Blouse For the Perfectly Bosomed

A fashion of incoherence that was inherent