Thanks to everybody who responded to my question about the "ghostly garden",
and please if there are more opinions, speak up! While it may be obvious to
some, it was vague to me. I wonder why she used the term 'garden' instead of
calling NYC a "ghostly graveyard" (with the high-rise headstones)? Maybe she
was saving that metaphor for "Harry's House" with the dragonfly on the tomb.
Along the same lines, I received an excellent reply from Sheldon, and when I
asked him to forward it to the list for others to read, he confessed that he
didn't know how to do that, and asked me to help out...
<<you have my permission to forward it
from your computer >>
So hopefully I won't get bounced from the list, but if I do, at least it was
for a good cause! ;~)Here's what Sheldon shared with me and now I'm sharing
with you:
<<the ghostly garden grows
the ghostly garden grows
great line.
to me, yes, it does mean the world
but more specifically the concrete urban world
of modern man that grows and grows unheeded
like a cancerous tumor fed by greed, ignorance and
indifference and is not self-sustaining but rather
feeds on the other garden, the garden of the natural
world or the mythological eden that i believe she's
referring to in 'woodstock'. the ghostly garden is
the residue of "the devil's bargain" that humankind is
snagged in and that seems to be hurling us toward
certain self-annihilation. this theme runs throughout
mitchell's work. i'm thinking of the obvious "they
pave paradise and put up a parking lot" or that line
from 'furry sings the blues', "history falls to
parking lots and shopping malls" and the song 'sex
kills' really expands on this theme "this massive mess
we're in". there are myriad examples i could draw
from throughout her body of work as i'm sure you well
know. the ghostly garden grows. it reminds me of
t.s. elliots "the waste land". its beyond just a
question of ecology, the ecology seems to me but a
symptom of a greater collective dis-ease or trick that
we've all fallen for. it can seem a bit overwhelming
and depressing if one really looks at it hard. i
think that's why i'm so drawn to her work. she has
been a relentless and profound observer of our sad
state of affairs for decades but i also love the side
of her that's "alive, alive i wanna get up and jive,
wreck my stockings in a juke box dive". she's a
haunting prophet and an irrepressible and hopeful
dancer in one. always shaking things up and waking us
up. well, i've got a regular essay going here and i
could go on and on "talk to me, talk to me"
in closing i would add that that ghostly garden could
be a bit of a metaphor for the accumulated lived
experience of the speaker in the song. the ghostly
garden of experience and memory grows and grows and
grows. i think what makes a great poem is that it
works on many different levels>>
Nice, huh? And great food for thought and discussion...
Bob
NP: Fat City, "Just A Little Bit"
