Today, I'm going to try to talk a little bit more about Elizabeth Bishop, and I'm also going to try to give some big perspectives on the poets we've been reading, and also some ways of thinking about how they fit together. Let's look at Bishop's poem, Over Two Thousand Illustrations, complete concordance. The poem plays second in her second book called A Cold Spring, published in 1955. The latest poems that we'll discuss in this course. On Wednesday I talked about Bishop's poetics of geography or travel as a horizontal poetics as opposed to the ascendant and sublime impulses in many of the poets that we have been examining this term. This poetics is ultimately a poetry of well-shifting perspectives and local perceptions. The question that it immediately poses is, well, how do we put these perceptions, these points of view, together? The, I think, exciting but also difficult textures of Bishop's great landscape poems, Florida, Cape Breton, At the Fish Houses, A Cold Spring, and others all pose this very clearly to us this problem. You might see the grains of sand that the sandpiper searches through in that little poem. Sandpiper as, again, exemplary of this problem in Bishop, that is, how do we hold on to organize, find coherence in a world of discreet and shifting phenomena? This is really the master problem that Bishop addresses very self-consciously in this poem, Over Two Thousand Illustrations and a Complete Concordance. Like the map it's a poem that is in part about a representation. She, by implication, begins the poem by referring to a book, presumably the one mentioned in the title, Over Two Thousand Illustrations and a Complete Concordance. What kind of book is that? She doesn't specify, but as the poem unfolds, there's reason to believe it's a Bible, I think, perhaps a family Bible. But she says, thus should have been our travels serious, engravable. Our travels, our experience in the world, our experience of geography, our experience as geography should have been, ought to be, serious. It ought to add up to something. It ought to be engravable, something that might be bound in book form. The image of a book with illustrations and a complete concordance holds up an idea that word and image, perhaps word and flesh, representation and experience might be bound together in a coherent unity, might be shown to exist in concordance or in some kind of correspondence. Against this ideal, or this model of things, where illustration and text are bound together, Bishop poses her own wayward experience, her travels, which this poem will list, record, give us fragments of. What the poem reveals to us is a world of discrete fragments, parts that gain meaning, if at all, through their mere adjacency, or through the perceiver who holds them together, holds them together through the quality of her attention and sensibility behind it, a form of attention for Bishop that is always pushing towards revelation, seeking meaning, something beyond surface detail, but never quite arrives there, or never in that sense arrives at a place of repose, or rest, or home. Let me read the second paragraph, which brilliantly represents the world brought into being by this poetics of geography. Entering the narrows at St. John, the touching bleat of goats reached our ship. We glimpsed them, reddish, leaping up the cliffs among the fog-soaked weeds and butter and eggs, and at St. Peter's the wind blew and the sun shone madly. Rapidly, purposefully, the collegians marched in the lines crisscrossing the great square with black, like ants. The poem is composed almost of the fragments of a travel diary, or bits of a letter. And if you read Bishop's letter, you will indeed find observations like this on every page. In Mexico, the dead man lay in a blue arcade. The dead volcanoes glistened like Easter lilies. The jukebox went on playing a lisco. And, at Volibulus, there were beautiful poppies, splitting the mosaics. The fat old guide made eyes. In Dingle Harbor – and we jerk from one place to another with each sentence, one country, one spot on the map – in Dingle Harbor, a golden length of evening, the rotting hulks held up their dripping plush. The Englishwoman poured tea, informing us that the Duchess was going to have a baby. This is one of Bishop's provocative juxtapositions in the poem. And in the brothels of Marrakesh, the little pockmarked prostitutes balanced their tea trays on their heads and did their belly dances, flung themselves naked and giggling against our knees, asking for cigarettes. It was somewhere near there I saw what frightened me most of all, implying, of course, that all of these scenes had frightened her. A holy grave, not looking particularly holy, one of a group under a keyhole archstone baldacan, open to every wind from the pink desert. An open, gritty marble trough, carved solid with exhortation, yellowed as scattered cattle teeth, half filled with dust, not even the dust of the poor prophet Panem who once lay there, just dust, in a smart Bernouce cadour, presumably their guide, looked unamused. Looking at this series, this way Bishop's life seems to add up. She continues reflecting on the poem and on its structure. Everything only connected by and and and. Open the book, and we're back to the book now, that ideal form of representation in which text and image are bound. The guilt rubs off the edges of the pages and pollinates the fingertips. Bishop wants us, as in the map, to, well, she wants the book as something that can be held and touched. She's a marvelously tactile poet, along with the unity of experience that it promises to give us is a sense of intimacy too with an object. Open the heavy book, she says to us, why couldn't we have seen while we were at it, the dark ajar, the rocks breaking with light, an undisturbed, unbreathing flame, colorless, sparkless, freely fed on straw and lulled within a family with pets, and looked and looked our infant sight away. The nativity is the scene of the incarnation, that moment when the word is made flesh Christmas morning, that moment when the divine takes human form and so becomes present in the world. This is specifically here, as Bishop imagines, that a scene of revelation, that wonderful phrase, the dark ajar, as if the shadow were a door, and you could enter it, the rocks breaking with light, that which is solid opening. What emerges is a flame, a sign of spirit. But notice how in this light the sacred is secularized. Bishop finds there is not the holy family but a family with pets. There is nostalgia in here, in this poem, poignant and powerful, that is a nostalgia not so much for the holy as for the family once constituted by their relation to the holy. The family with pets but also a family that gathered around the book to look at them. A family gathered through religious practice. Who might then have looked and looked our infant sight away? In that, looking is a expressed a kind of primal longing for community, for human connection, a longing expressed through looking, importantly for Bishop, which is really what the poet is doing in the map, I think, and the way that she invites us into her act of looking in that poem. Here, Bishop's nostalgia is sad but also resigned. This nativity is a scene that can be remembered and looked at from afar but not entered into, as the belief system that it comes out of and refers to can be looked at from afar but not entered into. Bishop, as several people remarked in section this week, calls us back in lots of different ways to Frost. Frost is perhaps an unusual place to begin a course on modern poetry, because, remember him, he really is generally an exception to the metropolitan scene and inspiration of modern poetry. Modern poetry is a poetry of the city, of the metropolis, of the world city, the place where the world's languages, traditions and cultures are all accessible, to use Marion Moore's word from her poem, New York. Pound, Elliott, Crane, Moore, Hughes, even Williams and Stevens in their somewhat different ways, are all poets of the metropolis. The sense of ambivalence about modernity in these places is an ambivalence in many ways about the city and what it promises and also what it in many ways threatens us with. Their sense of experience, their visions of modernity and of modern forms of community are all located and expressed there. Frost aggressively defines his work against that context. In doing this he links his writing to nineteenth-century American writing and art, links his writing to rural culture, which dominates the nineteenth century. There is an anti-modern strain in Frost, just as there is in Yates and more complexly in Pound and in Elliott. What's modern about Frost is what has changed in the rural cultures that he writes about, that is the collapse of farming economies and communities and the decay of nineteenth-century Protestantism, the white church and the village green. You feel that loss in the terrific aloneness of Frost's people. The great poem Directive is about all of these things. Frost's poetry struggles to incorporate the secular truths of modern science and to make poetry like science, a disenchanted knowledge. In this way, Frost has a lot in common with Auden, and Frost, again like Auden, is fundamentally concerned with poetry as a form of knowledge, a way to know the world. At the same time, poetry preserves for Frost certain archaic primitive powers of enchantment, powers associated with primitive motives, childhood experience, that make it a crucial alternative to science and scientific knowing. This is the magic trick at the end of Directive, when Frost takes us to the ruined house of nineteenth-century culture, the ruined farmhouse of home burial, maybe, and steals from the abandoned children's playhouse a broken drinking goblet like the Grail and uses it to invite us to drink from a primal source too lofty and original to rage that spring, and in drinking to be whole again beyond confusion. What are we drinking there then at the end of Frost's poem? This poem published at the end of the Second World War. We're drinking a kind of elemental power that seems to diffuse language and longing and imagination. This is in Frost a conscious rewriting, I think, partially even a send-up as well as a competition with Eliot in the Wasteland and the Grail Myths that are one of the central motifs of that poem, one of the central motifs of Eliot, a sense of the holy, which is present, however, for Eliot only through literary illusion, something fascinating but unavailable as actual experience, something available only, in a sense, as quotation. Poetry in Frost as in Eliot does the work religion no longer does, but notice how in Frost, indirective, the belief that poetry asks from us is a belief in a fiction, in make-believe. And in this, Frost is strangely and wonderfully and surprisingly perhaps fully the contemporary of Wallace Stevens and Hart Crane whose work proceeds from that same assumption. Stevens' wartime poem, Asides on the Obo, begins, The Prologues Are Over. It is a question now of final belief, so say that final belief must be in a fiction. It is time to choose. This is the theme of Stevens' wartime masterpiece, Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction. I notice the contradictory impulses in Stevens' title. When poetry takes the place of religion for Stevens, it presents itself as a supreme fiction, a total representation of the world and experience. But we only have partial, provisional access to that fiction. What Stevens gives us is merely notes, notes, something that Elizabeth Bishop might present us with, too. In this sense, in Stevens the shift from religion to poetry is also a shift from totalization, from system to contingency and incompletion to parts, rather than a whole. For Stevens, the disappearance of the Christian God as the center of emotional and spiritual cultural life is essentially, however, a cause for celebration. In Eliot, it's a cause for mourning, mourning and anxiety, distress. In Yates, it's a cause of fascination and horror, in crane for the making of new myths, new metaphors. Hughes' secular poems are Christ-haunted. Christ, in all of the iconography associated with him, is a source of hope and also irony, for black culture and a reproach to the white world. How do people, how does culture find bearing in a world without divine sanction? This is played out as an ethical question, a question about how to live and act rightly in more and then later in Bishop. In general, it is a less urgent question, a less central one in the later poets than in the earlier ones. Things fall apart, the center cannot hold, Yates says, in the second coming. Bishop is fundamentally at home in this condition, which is a condition of centerlessness or homelessness. He liked the phrase, the world's an orphan's home in Moore. Bishop is at home then with a certain kind of homelessness. Travel is her metaphor for the mobility of consciousness in a world without a stable center. Poetry is written from the disturbingly and disorientingly decentered point of view that we find already in those early poems of hers, a point of view that takes for granted the absence of central authority that religion once provided. Remember, in over 2,000 illustrations in a complete concordance that holy grave, it's not even particularly clear what he says. The place of the sacred in Bishop has been vacated. Might poetry fill it? This isn't a question Bishop asks or is concerned with, but it is, as I've been suggesting, an urgent one in many ways for the poets who preceded her. The poetry of the period 1910 through 1940 say really the great phase of modern poetry. This period is structured, I think, by two big questions. How should poetry be written and what can it do? What can it accomplish in the world? In the first lecture I talked about these different impulses, which are at once opposing but also, related and interlocking. I called one of them formal and inward turning, an aesthetic. The other, rather outward turning, concerned with the moral, the political, the social. The first one tends to limit the definition of poetry to say what is particular to this art, to isolate what is essential to it. The other works to extend poetry's scope, to give it an expanded role in culture in the world, in our lives. You see different versions of both of these impulses in the career trajectories of H.D. and William Carlos Williams, who begin as masters of a certain kind of short poem and go on to create epic poems of cultural sweep, H.D.'s being called Trilogy, Williams' Patterson. But the poet who more than any embodies these two impulses in the shape of his career is Pound, of course. As I said, the author of the shortest and the longest poem in modern poetry, the exponent of Imagesm and the author of The Cantos. Imagesm seems to want to get outside of history to explore the sudden liberation from space limits and time limits, Pound says, in a kind of autonomous aesthetic experience. The cantos, however, are a poem, as Pound called it, including history, a poem of the greatest possible range and scope and ambition. In Imagesm there's an attempt to establish the primary poetic unit, to cut away what is inessential, to find what is true. This is a kind of formal program that expresses a drive towards truth-telling that we find in somewhat different terms in Frost and Auden and Moore. Think of Frost's sense of fact versus in mowing the easy gold at the hand of Faye or Elf, or think of Yeats's stylistic transformation as expressed in that short poem, a coat, or the Fisherman poems from 1915. Think about Moore's and Auden's severe revisions of their work, in each case involving cutting out poems or cutting away many lines in order to arrive at what Moore called in poetry, that poem subjected to severe revision, The Genuine. These are all creative acts of, I think you could say, self-limitation. And they're linked to the general recurrent theme in these poets, in particular Auden, Moore, Frost, too. The general theme of restraint or reticence, the deepest feeling always shows itself in silence, not in silence but restraint. Remember Auden's stone god that never was more reticent, always afraid to say more than he meant. This impulse that I'm describing in modern poetry is also related to formal experiments with restraint. You see this worked into Moore's syllabics. Modern poetry in many ways seeks to restrain the singing voice and the lyric voice of romantic poetry, as received through nineteenth-century poetry, Frost's vernacular, his will to get the sound of his poems into his poems' functions in this way. So does Hughes's vernacular, his black speech. Think about Eliot's syntactic and logical discontinuities and disjunctions, the way they interrupt and fragment lyric utterance. Or think about Pound's incorporation of blocks of prose, as he did in The Piantos. There is, in all of these examples, a tendency to define what is modern and modern poetry by the incorporation of traditionally non-poetic forms of speech and language use, and, moreover, and importantly, non-traditional methods of organizing poetic language. At the same time, this impulse can be seen as a way not of limiting or tailing poetry's scope, but rather the opposite, expanding it, expanding it to include, even, as Moore puts it, school books and business documents, making poetry available for people in cultures and experience that had not previously been represented in poetry. Other modern poetry is experimental in a very different way indeed in its revival and recovery and incorporation of historical, poetic forms. You could understand Hart Crane's reclaiming of Elizabethan and nineteenth-century forms of ornamental rhetoric and versification as exactly this kind of reclaiming of archaic materials. There is something similar going on in Pound, in Pound's recovery of Provence-Saul and Anglo-Saxon verse forms, his revival of these forms. Pound and Crane are both heroic poets. Did he answer that question? What can poetry do? What can it affect in culture by saying simply everything? That's really the extraordinary presumption of their long poems, The Bridge and The Cantos. They are very different poets, however, and to some extent, exposed figures, although indeed their claims for poetry made them both exposed figures in poignant and complicated ways. When I talk about their difference, I'm thinking of Pound's suspicion of rhetoric, his suspicion of representation, his will or drive to get beyond these things, versus Crane's faith in rhetoric, faith in rhetoric and imagination and their power to transform the world. In France, you couldn't have two more different poets, but both of these poets take poetry as a kind of metaphor, as not only a metaphor, but as the salient instance of the creative impulse in history. What makes history happen? What makes action in history? And they place poetry at the center of all that is most important that we do. They both propose that poetry can fulfill the central mediating functions that religion once did. Pound and Crane become cautionary figures for later poets, to some extent Yeats does too. That is, figures who seem to show the limits of poetry precisely in their efforts to expand them. This is one way we can understand Bishop's poem, Visits to St. Elizabeth's, on page 133. This is a poem that describes Bishop's periodic visits to Ezra Pound in St. Elizabeth's Hospital where Pound was institutionalized, incarcerated, after his return to the United States on charges of treason. Bishop was living in Washington as the poetry consultant to the Librarian of Congress, and it befell her almost as an official duty to visit Pound, hear him talk, and bring people to Pound. It became the occasion for Bishop's poem built on the form of this is the house that Jack built. This is the poetry that Jack made. This is the house of Bedlam. This is the man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is the time of the tragic man that lies in the house of Bedlam. She continues adding each time, adding, and of course in Bishop's distinctive manner, only repeating but revising the terms that she's given us. Again, a poetics of constant readjustment. As the poem builds, characters are included not only Pound but Pound represented as the man but also soldier, a boy, a Jew, figures that are versions of Pound, perhaps. Reaching a climax in the final stanza, this is the soldier home from the war, perhaps that's Pound in some sense. These are the ears and the walls and the door that pats the floor to see if the world is round or flat. Again, Bishop touching a map. This is a Jew in a newspaper hat that dances carefully down the wall at Ward, walking the plank of a coffin board with the crazy sailor that shows his watch that tells the time of the wretched man who lies in the house of Bedlam. It's a great poem. I spoke of Odin's and Bishop's perspectivism. Here, Bishop gives us multiple perspectives on Pound and by extension on the social and political ambitions of modernist poetry. Pound is tragic, talkative, honored, old, brave, cranky, cruel, and finally simply wretched, a word that comes from the seafarer. Arguably, one strain of modern poetry ends here in 1950 in the Madhouse in Bedlam. Importantly though, it is not that Bishop stands apart from in a position to judge Pound. Instead, she is interestingly, I think, implicated in the scene. She must have enjoyed and, by her choice of title, caused attention to the irony that Pound is in a Madhouse that has the same name as Bishop. In Bishop's great war poem Roosters, there is a sense that to oppose conflict out in the world one must encounter conflict in oneself. Here, too, I think in multiple ways Bishop implicates herself in the objects of her critique in Satire. The child's verse form, it's important. Bishop identifies with, I think it's fair to say, she's certainly interested in poetry. This interest points, I think, to Bishop's sense of herself as a minor poet. That is a mapmaker, not a historian, a poet who refuses to write the major culturally central, aggressively ambitious poetry to which modernism, most of all, the poetry of Pound, aspired. Auden's perspectivism in Musée des Beaux-Arts seems to position the poet and poetry similarly. So does that famous statement in the Yates' elegy, For Poetry Makes Nothing Happen. These poems, Musée des Beaux-Arts, the summary of W.B.E.A.T.'s read like rebukes to modern poetry's Promethean ambitions, its verticality, if you like, rebukes to Auden's own political poetry of the 1930s, exemplified by a poem like Spain, 1937. But, as I stressed, Auden doesn't put a full stop on that sentence for Poetry Makes Nothing Happen. Rather, he punctuates it with a colon and continues, it survives. There is perhaps a double implication here. Either poetry does not have an effect in the world but still survives, despite its lack of making something happen, or it survives because it makes nothing happen. It is not a cause, and it doesn't take up causes effectively. What it does, rather, as Auden represents it here, is create a space, a space of happening, a landscape, a model of the world, seen in the same time as a valley and a river, the river that flows through it. There's terrific power of affirmation in this claim about poetry's survival at the moment of Yeats' death, at the moment of the onset of the Second World War when all the dogs of Europe bark. Ultimately, in Auden poetry survives as a way of happening, as he calls it, that is, a way in the sense of both a method and a path. Implicitly, as I suggested talking about this poem earlier, it survives as a kind of open space, a place to come into, to collect and gather in for us. It is figured, I think, finally implicitly as a mouth, the human mouth, open to speak, old words and new words, too. Poetry survives in my mouth and also in yours, which seems like a good last sentence to end this course with. Thank you very much.


Family Theater presents Dorothy Warren-Schold and Paul Picerni. From Hollywood, the Mutual Network and Cooperation with Family Theater presents Slap in the Face starring Dorothy Warren-Schold. And now, here is your host, Paul Picerni. Thank you, Tony Lafranco. Family Theater's only purpose is to bring to everyone's attention a practice that must become an important part of our lives if we are to win peace for ourselves, peace for our families, and peace for the world. Family Theater urges you to pray. Pray together as a family. And now to our transcribed drama, Slap in the Face starring Dorothy Warren-Schold as Louise. The second floor corridor of the Central High School is deserted. It's four o'clock, almost an hour since the last class ended. Down in the gymnasium, the clang of an occasionally slammed locker can be heard. Suddenly, from the half-open door of a classroom near the end of the hall, angry voices are heard.  You hit me. You come back here and give me that. You hit me, Miss Wiley. Jack, give me that paper. You hit me and I'm gonna report it. Jack, come back here. The boy races along the corridor, reaches the head of the stairs, and starts down, disappearing from sight. For a long moment, Miss Wiley looks at the distant staircase.  She glances down with a torn sheet of paper in her hand. Impulsively, she crumbles it. Turns back into the empty classroom, and slowly begins to gather up the books and papers on her desk. The boy, Jack Terry, reaches the bottom of the stairs, and her is along the corridor. His hand strays to his face. Then he becomes aware of a torn scrap of paper in his other hand. He stops, looks at the paper, and quickly stuffs it into the pocket of his jacket. Then he walks deliberately up the corridor to a long line of glass-enclosed offices near the front entrance of the building. I'd like to see the principal, Mr. Thompson. Well, I'm afraid he's rather busy at the moment. Is it anything I can help you with? No, I've got to see him. Well, if it could wait till tomorrow morning... No, it's important. I've got to see him right now. What happened to your face? That's what I want to tell him about. I just got slapped by a teacher. I want to report it.  Who was the teacher? Miss Wiley. Louise? You see the nail marks on my face, don't you? I can't believe it. Well, she did. I want to report it to Mr. Thompson, right now. Bill. Hi, honey. You just getting through? Yes, I had to keep one of the boys after school. How's the practice going? Oh, they're going to be okay. I guess there's bound to be one basketball player among them. You know, I've often wanted to ask you why do basketball and football coaches always wear baseball caps? Well, honey, you're shaking like a leaf. What's wrong? Oh, it's nothing. Well, come on now. What is it? Really, it's nothing. Honey, this is Bill. Now, what's the matter? I... Well, I had some trouble with the boy. I kept after school this afternoon. Who? Jack Terry. Oh, that kid's just got a lot of lip. I had him in geometry last semester.  Well, I know it's silly. Well, he's just one of those wise acres that comes along every so often. Now, you forget all about him. I will. Sure. Listen, I better get back to work. It's still on for dinner tonight, huh? Of course. Good. I'll pick you up about seven. Kiss. Bill. Well, you quit worrying. We're engaged, aren't we? Yes, but if anyone sees us... All the places are morgged. Now, come on. I guess you must think you're engaged to a nervous wreck. A nicest wreck in town. Honey, you look a little beat.  I think I will. And take it easy, sweetie. Seven o'clock. Bye, honey. Louise. Miss Wiley. Yes? Mr. Thompson? I wonder if you'd step into my office for a minute. Of course. A student of yours, a boy named Jack Terry, has just reported that you slapped him. I see. Did you? No. No, I didn't. Well, I didn't believe it for a minute, but the boy seemed very insistent. His face is marked up with nail scratches. I give you my word, Mr. Thompson. I didn't slap him. I'm glad to hear it. But since he's in my office right now, would you mind coming in and settling this once and for all? Of course not. Let's go in the side door here. I've got some people waiting in the outer office. All right. Well, Jack? Yes, Mr. Thompson? Miss Wiley? Jack. Why did you come in here and lie to me? But I wasn't lying. Miss Wiley just told me she didn't slap you. Now, what's this all about? Well, I don't care what she told you, she did. Why do you think I got these scratches on my face? Well, how did you? She hauled off and hit me. Jack, you know that's not true. It is so. Just a minute, just a minute. Mr. Thompson, all I know is that she put these scratches on my face, and that's the truth, and she knows it. Is that the truth, Miss Wiley? I didn't slap him. He knows I didn't slap him. All right, Jack. That'll be all. You can go. I'm going to tell my mother about this. I expect to call her myself sometime this evening. Will she be home? Yes, sir. I'll tell her. Very well. Goodbye, Jack. Bye, sir. Louise. I didn't slap the boy, Mr. Thompson. I give you my word. But you did put those scratches on his face. Yes. Well, it was an accident. It was an accident, that's all. Was he trying to strike you? Were you defending yourself? No. Did the boy try to get fresh? No. No, it... I lost my temper for a moment and... and struck him. No. I didn't mean to touch him. I had no intention of doing anything, but... But why? I'm sorry, Mr. Thompson, it's a personal matter. It is not, not anymore.  But the boy is lying. About what? If I don't have your side of the story, I don't even know where to begin. I've told you all I can. It was an accident. I didn't mean to strike him. And that's all? That's all you've got to say? Yes, Mr. Thompson. That's all. There she is. Oh, hello honey. Come on in. Hey, I'll come. You're not ready. You oversleep? No. Bill, do you mind if we call it off for tonight? No date? Do you mind? I've been feeling sort of punk all day. I've got a headache. Maybe you'd do your good to get out of this cave for a while. I just don't feel up to it, please. Sure. How about dinner though? Well, I had some soup a little while ago. I don't seem to have any appetite.  It isn't anything, I just... Hold still. You haven't got a fever? No, all I need is a good night's sleep. You go ahead though. I know you want to see that movie. Back till tomorrow night. It's going to be there till Tuesday. Well, I'm going to be working tomorrow night. At what? Well, I gave the regular weekly test today and I don't quite feel up to correcting them tonight. So correct them over the weekend. That's what you usually do it? Yes, I know, but I've fallen behind on some other things, so I thought I'd use the weekend for them and then... Honey, what is this, a stall? Of course not, Bill. Well it is. You just killed tonight, then Friday and now the weekend. Bill... What's going on? Well, I don't know if we ought to be seeing as much of one another as we have been. Louise. You know how Mr. Thompson feels about what he calls romantic attachments between his teachers. Louise, is this the brush? Oh, honey, no. Look, we've been over all of this, we're engaged. Well, I'm just saying, I don't know how smart it is. Honey, I don't begin to get this. We've agreed to keep the engagement secret. And we've done it. Well, not like last Saturday night. When we ran into that crowd of students at Alex's. So we're having dinner together. Yes, but it doesn't look good. You know, it looks kind of sneaky. Oh, Louise, for Pete's sake. Well, it does. Honey, what started all this? Well, I've just been thinking. No. No, you could have been thinking Sunday and Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday, but it didn't start till today. Now, what's the story here? I just don't believe this kind of gossip is any good for you. Well, I'm not worried. Well, maybe you ought to be. About what?  Maybe I'll quit after we get married. So what are you worried about? Just a minute.  Hello? Louise? Yes? This is Mr. Thompson. Oh. Oh, yes. I just spoke to Mrs. Terry on the phone. Yes? She's mighty upset. She says Jack came home this afternoon, looking like he'd been clawed by a tiger. That's nonsense. Perhaps. But there wasn't much I could say by way of rebuttal. She's bringing the boy to school tomorrow. She'll be in my office at nine o'clock and she wants to see you. I'll be there. You sure there's nothing you want to tell me in the meantime? No. I want to think about it a little more. I'll see you in the morning. Yes. Goodbye. Goodbye. Well, it looks like I turned up at the wrong time. What? Who was that? The other guy? Oh, Bill. Don't be silly. No, no. I had it right the first time. The brush, huh? What are you talking about? Hello? Yes. Yes. And then that's nonsense. Bill. What's nonsense? He asked if you had company? Oh, honey. It's not what you think. Oh, you'll be there, huh? When? Tonight while I'm at the movie? Oh, Bill. This is so silly. Oh, sure. Cry it up. Tell me about it a little more. About what? Giving me the gate?  I love you. I love you. That was Mr. Thompson. Thompson? What's he calling you about? Oh, Bill, I... I hope you stay jealous like this forever. What's going on, Louise? Oh, it's... It's about that boy I kept after school this afternoon. Oh, Jack Terry? Mm-hmm. I, uh... I scratched his face. Sit down, honey. Come on over here. Sit down. I didn't mean to. But he reported it. And he's bringing his mother to school tomorrow. Maybe you better tell me what happened. Principal's office is just around this next corner, Mom.  Last time when you get home this afternoon, take that jacket to the cleaners. Okay, okay. I'm ashamed to be seen with you. Mom, will you save it? Everybody's looking. I wish you wouldn't have hang around with that bunch of tufts anyhow, the rockets. They're not tufts, they're just guys. I know what they are. Okay, okay. Here it is. Now, just a minute. I'm going to ask you once more. Mom, how many times do I have to tell you? It happened just the way I said.  She's been on my back all the time. I'm asking about the slap. It's the way I told you. She hauled off and hit me. You better be telling the truth, Jack. Well, I am. Why would I lie about it? All right. Let's go in. Good morning. Can I help you? I'm Mrs. John Terry. The principal's expecting us. Oh, yes. Just a moment, please. Yes? Mrs. Terry, to see you. Of course. Won't you come in, please? You too, Jack. I believe we met last spring at the Bazaar, didn't we, Mrs. Terry? It was a Christmas festival. Of course, of course. Do sit down. Thank you. You were in the pastry booth. Arts and crafts. Arts and crafts. Isn't that strange? I can see you in the pastry booth. Mr. Thompson, I understand that Miss Wiley was to be here this morning. She'll be along any moment. I must confess, frankly, Mrs. Terry, I'm as much in the dark about this as you are. From what I can see, there's not much to be in the dark about. She put those scratches on Jack's face. She didn't deny it. She claims it was an accident. It was no accident. You speak when you're spoken to. Okay, okay. I don't see how such a thing could be an accident, Mr. Thompson. Well, I can only say that in the two years since Miss Wiley came here to teach, her record has been spotless. There's always a first time. Excuse me. Yes? Miss Wiley, to see you, Mr. Thompson. Send her right in, please. Yes, sir. Mr. Thompson. Come in, Miss Wiley. Mrs. Terry, this is Miss Louise Wiley. Mrs. Terry, how do you do? Good morning, Jack. Good morning. Now, if everyone will be seated, you can take this chair, Miss Wiley. Thank you. I would like to say at the outset, Mrs. Terry, that I'm as anxious to get to the bottom of this as you. I'm glad to hear that. For that reason, I would ask that we all make every effort to keep our tempers in check. All I'm interested in learning is why this woman scratched my son's face yesterday. I agree. That is the issue. It turns, however, on a somewhat finer point. You claim, Jack, that Miss Wiley slapped you. Is that right? It sure is. And you, Miss Wiley, claim it was an accident. Yes, sir. Have you considered that Jack might honestly feel you intended to hit him? He knows I didn't. That's why he's lying. Mom.  I'm sorry, but he is. Mrs. Terry, just a minute. She hit me. If we can't discuss this calmly, we'll never learn anything. Now, Jack. Yes, sir. You're the one who has made the accusation. Why don't you tell us your version of what happened? Well... Go ahead, son. Tell him what you told me. Well, she kept me after school to do some homework I hadn't turned in. How much homework? Well, for the last three nights. You remember, Mama, I was kind of sick.  You couldn't watch television. I was just lying on the couch. Don't argue with me. Tell him what happened. Well, after I finished the homework, I brought it up to her desk, and she started giving me a bad time. Could you be a little more specific, son? Huh? Just what did Miss Wiley say or do? Well, she looked over the work I'd done and told me it was wrong, and I was just lazy and I'd have to do it over again. Oh, yes? Well, I started to say I'd done it the best I could, and I was getting a little tired of her picking on me all the time, and wham! She hits me across the face. Well, that's all there was to it. I ran out of the room. I see. And that's exactly what he told me when he came home last night. Well, Miss Wiley? I wonder if I could ask Jack a question? Sure. How did I slap you? What do you mean? Well, did I make a fist or did I slap you open-handed? It was a slap, open-handed. With the palm of my hand? Yeah. And how many times did I slap you? Once, like I said. Did I slap you hard? You know you did. But only once. Well, once was enough. Miss Wiley. I'm trying to get at something here, Mr. Thompson, and I can't do it until I know exactly what Jack's accusing me of. Well, I'd say that was pretty clear by now. So would I, Mrs. Terry. Could I ask you to do something for me? For you? I don't think you'll mind. Would you stand up, please? Oh, now look here. Please. It's very important. All right. I've been noticing your fingernails. What? Well, they're very nicely kept, and they're a good deal longer than mine. I wonder if you'd lift your right hand and slap me in the face. Slap you in the face? The way you think I slapped your son. Hard. What? Please, I'm trying to prove something. Thank you, Mrs. Terry. Miss Wiley, are you?  Look closely in my face. Do you see any fingernail scratches? No. No, I don't. So your son's face couldn't have been scratched if I struck him the way he said I did. Oh, now look. Not if I only slapped you once, Jack.  Well, you can talk all you want. I still got these scratches and you gave them to me. And you think I'm too embarrassed to explain how I gave them to you, don't you? Well, I don't know what you're talking about. Any time you don't. Mr. Thompson, I don't dig this at all. Just a minute, son.  What happened? Well, it started out, as Jack said. I kept him after school to catch up on some back homework. There were three assignments at all of about ten questions each. Out of the syllabus, he didn't start work until almost 3.20. And even in the hands of a very bright student, the job would take the better part of an hour. So I decided to start grading the weekly tests I'd given yesterday. Oh, I'd been working for perhaps twenty minutes when a point came up that I wanted to check in my teacher's manual. When I reached into my briefcase, I noticed that there was an envelope pressed between the pages of the book. I knew right away it was from Bill. I opened it and read the note. I guess you could call it a love letter. He likes to do that, leave little notes and poems in places I wouldn't suspect. I hope he never stops. I read the note twice, and then suddenly I realized I was standing in front of my desk. I'll finish. You mean you've completed three assignments in 25 minutes? Well, I missed a couple of questions. I couldn't get them. They're in the syllabus. All you have to do is look. I look. Just one of those things. Well, I'll see you tomorrow. You stay right where you are. I'm going to check this work, and what you've omitted, you're going to sit down and finish. Look, Miss Wiley, what are we rushing through life about? What? Well, I can't cut this Shakespeare jazz. Well, you're going to learn how to cut it, Sonny, so stop trying to sound like something out of a brass section. You've got a long way to go. Now, what was so difficult about this third question? The third question. Why did Hamlet, what are you looking at on my desk? This. Keep your hands off of that. I think you're going to stop being so rough on me, Miss Wiley. Give me that letter. With all my love, Bill. And I know who Bill is. You give me that. Give me the rest of that note. You hit me. You come back here. Give me that. You hit me, Miss Wiley. Jack, give me that paper. You hit me, and I'm going to report it. Jack, come back here. Then you claim, Miss Wiley, that you scratched Jack's face and tearing the love letter from his hand. Yes. He pulled it away up toward his face to keep me from grabbing it. I must have scratched him then. This is a lot of baloney. I never saw any love letter. Just a moment, Jack. Do you happen to have this letter, Louise? Yes. Here. Well, it seems perfectly innocuous. It's just a love note. Yes. But the man who wrote it, Bill, the man I'm engaged to, is Mr. William Estrada. Oh. Who's Mr. William Estrada? One of the teachers here, Mrs. Terry. I knew the handwriting was familiar. Mr. Thompson, I know you make a practice of discouraging this sort of thing among your staff. But I find it's a sound policy, Miss Wiley. Well, all right. But Bill and I are in love and engaged, and we're going to get married, and I'm sorry about the policy. Jack, I'm so disgusted with you. Mom, I'm telling you, this is baloney. I don't think so. She's making it up. I never saw any love letter. Louise, what happened to the rest of this, the bottom part that was torn off? Mom, I'm telling you. Jack had it in his hand when he ran out of the room. I never even saw it. Well, it couldn't have been two minutes later when he came into my office. Jack. Now, Mama. I want you to empty your pockets. What is all this jazz? I'll give you jazz like you never heard. Now, empty your pockets. Mom. Start with your jacket. Go ahead, son. It's just a lot of junk.  Let's see the junk. Okay. I still got it. Here. Does it match the rest of the note, Mr. Thompson? Yes, exactly. I... I'm sorry, Miss Wiley. I just don't... I'm sorry. All right, Jack. I could cry. I'm so ashamed of you. I just can't get with the Shakespeare stuff. But you can get with the rockets. You can get with hanging around street corners every night with wax in your hair. Okay, okay. It's not okay. Now, I don't know whether Miss Wiley meant to hit you or not, but just in case she didn't. Mom.  Okay. All of them. I hope you both will excuse this outburst, of course. Not at all. Come on. Where's your first class? Physics. Where? Mr. Robertson, 206. I'll go with you. I'll be in touch with you, Mr. Thompson. Anytime, Mr. Terry. Well, I'm glad everything got ironed out, Louise. So am I, Mr. Thompson. I could be mistaken, but I thought I saw Bill, Mr. Strada, sitting out there in the office when Mrs. Terry left just now. So did I, Mr. Thompson. I just want to say, I hope you'll both be very happy. So do I, Mr. Thompson. This is Paul Picerni again. We, a family theater, wish to express again our gratitude for your letters of appreciation and criticism of our family theater productions. It is we know not always convenient for you to write to us, but we ask that you be conscious of the fact that the satisfaction we feel in receiving your letters is not only reflected in the production of stories that you want to hear, but is so satisfying in that it proves to us that the purpose of this program is being met. A purpose which has but one goal, family prayer. If this goal can be brought about good entertainment, stories that you want to hear, then we are encouraged in our purpose. Family prayer is not solely the province of adults, but it serves as the best example we can provide our children. For children should be taught to pray, and they learn best by seeing and doing. That is why week after week we ask you to pray. Pray together as a family. That is why week after week we sum up our purpose with a statement that the family that prays together stays together. The script was written and directed for Family Theater by John T. Kelly with music composed and conducted by Harry Zimmerman. This series of Family Theater broadcasts is made possible by the thousands of you'll feel the need for this type of program, by the mutual network which has responded to this need, and by the hundreds of stars of state screen and radio who give so unselfishly their time and talent to appear on our Family Theater stage.  This is Tony Lafrono expressing the wish of Family Theater that the blessing of God may be upon you and your home and inviting you to join us next week when Family Theater will present First Law of the Jungle Jimmy Durante will be your host. Join us, won't you? Family Theater has broadcast throughout the world and originates in the Hollywood studios of the world's largest network. This is Mutual, the radio network for all America.


Hi everyone, Joe for Jaspy's Case of Breaks.com. Happy Choo Tuesday. It's also a 10 box Tuesday. TNT. 10 box Tuesday. TNT. Alright, so all spots sold between the time Chris Jaspy went off air last night to 1030 Pacific tonight, which was just five minutes ago. Take that big list of names, randomize them. Top 10 get boxes, elements, hit parade, chrome sapphire, prism draft picks, football, absolute baseball, select draft picks, football, prism draft baseball, heritage, tops chrome mega chronicles draft picks. A lot of nice stuff. Remember, full spots sold and the kickoff mixer are worth 50 entries. No one bought a spot today. But full spots and fillers for the Big Hit Express and fillers for the kickoff mixer were worth 10 entries each. Big thanks to this group for making it happen. So that we ended up with a ton of entries. I think this might be the most entries I've seen in any given promo type thing. Not 500, not 700, not 800, but 917 entries while. Alright, now let's copy all of these entries. New dice, new list, put all the names in here. I think they can handle because it's a maximum of 10,000. I don't think we're ever going to get 10,000 entries in anything. Alright, let's roll and randomize that. Giant list, snake eyes, two times, that's it. Easy. And so it's going to be the top 10 after two get boxes in that order. Good luck. One, right, that was 917, 917, yeah. So there's one and here's two. Two times. Alright, good luck everybody. Alright, so we're getting pretty close. Thanks everybody for making this happen. There's a lot of fun. Alright, so there's 14 right there. There is 11 William very close, but no cigar. But top 10, congrats, you've got boxes. Steve and Eugene, Mark, Steve, Brian, Sal, Chad, Adam and Dean. There's the top 10 after two and here's what you end up with. Dean, you get the elements box. Adam with the Hit Parade graded vintage football box, Chad with the top chrome sapphire, Sal with the prism draft picks, Brian with the absolute, Steve with the select draft picks football, Mark with the prism draft baseball, Dean with the heritage, Eugene with the top scroll mega box, and Steve with the chronicles draft picks hobby box in those respective years as well. Congrats. We're going to send them to you sealed if you choose to open them and you get something awesome, definitely let us know. Maybe you can tag us on social media at Jasper's Breaks or if you choose to sell it, you can sell it sealed if you want to as well. It's yours. Thanks everybody. Keep an eye for more of these promos on Jasper's CaseRace.com. I'm Joe. I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.


Ashley, can you please introduce us to your daughter? So this is Peyton. She is almost a year old next month. Isn't she the cutest? Oh my gosh. OK, so Ashley, tell us. There was something that had happened when Peyton was born. Can you tell us a little bit about what that was? So when she was born, one of her thighs was a little bit more swollen than the other one, and it was really red. And so we weren't sure what was going on. So tell us. I know you had initially seen this right when she was born. She's a natural man. Right when she was born. And so did you guys go to the doctor or what happened in that process? So we had to go get an ultrasound done on her leg, and they checked to see what it was that was in there, why it was swollen. There was something in there. They just weren't sure what it was after the ultrasound. They thought it was a hematoma or something like that, which is just a collection of blood cells. Normally they're on top of the skin, but this one was just weird that it was under the skin. So OK. She's obviously doing really good, folks. This is awesome. So OK, so now I know you had that initial ultrasound. What was the next thing that happened going further into that process? So after that, they decided that something was there. So we went to get an MRI, and they thought they were going to have to put her to sleep, but she just miraculously fell asleep and was asleep for the whole MRI. That they decided there was a mass in there, and it wasn't a hematoma because it was surrounded by the blood cells. So it was like an actual mass surrounded by blood cells, not a hematoma. So with that MRI, which is the miraculous, I don't know if any of you have been through a MRI before, but they're noisy, they're loud, and she fell asleep during it. Like that is miraculous in itself. And you had told God that she knew by that, that her daughter falling asleep, she knew that God was going to heal her. Because it was one of those things that was so miraculous in itself that it was just one step, one side, to let her know that God was going to heal her daughter. And so now with that MRI, what had the doctors decided was ultimately what was going to need to happen. So they wanted to do a biopsy on it. So they wanted to put her to sleep and put her under anesthesia and do a biopsy, actual surgery where they cut into her leg and test it to see if it's cancer or what exactly, what type of a tumor it was. So during this time, I mean, this wasn't a short amount of time. This was over the span of several months.  And what was going on in your mind during that time? Like what type of emotions were you feeling? And how were you combating those things? I was definitely scared. And you just try not to let fear creep in. I kept speaking life. Like, no, God, I believe she's blessed, she's healed. You're going to heal her. I'm not going to let fear creep in and I'm not going to let fear take authority over, like a control of me. I was going to have authority over it and. Absolutely. That's how we stand, you guys. Like, come on, that's good. That's good stuff right there.  You're choosing to have faith in God versus fear over whatever this thing is. Now you had scheduled this surgery out and the first time you went over, tell us about what that looked like. So we went over for the biopsy and she had been sick two weeks before that with influenza. And so we got there after driving all the way to Seattle from here and they said, well, we're going to reschedule because she needs to be not sick for three weeks, at least. So we're going to do an MRI or an ultrasound again, just so it's not a wasted trip. So they did it again and it was still there. And then they noticed there was another smaller bump right below it. So what do you feel like after that? I was feeling a little bit defeated, but I was like, no, God, I know that you're in control and there's a reason and a purpose and a plan and I'm just going to not fear because fear is something that just captivates me and so I didn't even let it creep in. Everybody was like, how do you feel? God's going to heal her. I feel good, do you know? Yeah, amen. Amen, come on guys. Come on. Okay, so the first time you go over to get a surgery, it's a no go because she has the flu. So now you guys push it out a little bit further and what happens the next time you guys go? So the next time we go, it was the day, it's all setting in. It's like, okay, she's actually going to have surgery today and I'm just going to have to accept that while we went in and I'm crying and nervous and they're like, we're just going to do an ultrasound just to be safe, just check it out one more time and they went in and they came back and he's like, well, it's gone. There's nothing in there. It's like, amen, amen. God is so faithful and so good. So for, I know that you're not the only one who's been believing for healing, believing for salvation, believing for whatever, over their children, over their families. What would you tell people who are in the same or similar position as what you were in? Just don't be afraid because that's what cripples you. Just tell, speak to your mountain and tell it to move. Don't let it tell you what to do. Absolutely, amen. God is so good. Come on, let's give it up. Thank you, Ashley.


Studying Macbeth? Here's how you can analyse everyone's reaction in Act 2, Scene 3, when they realise King Duncan has died. Macduff enters and asks Macbeth if the King has woken up. Macbeth pretends that he hasn't and he offers Macduff to take him to his room. Lennox notices the weather that night was really bad and he uses pathetic fallacy here to highlight that something unnatural may have happened. Macduff discovers King Duncan's dead body and repetition in this exclamatory sentence shows that he is aghast at what he's seen. Macduff uses religious language to describe King Duncan's death. This language relates to divine rite of kings. God's own representative on earth has now been killed. Lady Macbeth enters and pretends to be really shocked by all this commotion. Macduff responds in an iobic metameter hair and he believes she's too fragile to handle this news. Lennox then says he thinks the gods killed King Duncan because he found them covered in blood. Lady Macbeth then further distracts them by pretending to faint. King Duncan's sons are skeptical so they decide to run away to England and Ireland.