Everyday Life

scholar Zoe Brennan’s statement that Lessing, Carter and Diski, among others, “challenge the construction of old age as a period devoid of sexual feeling […] thus mock[ing] the idea that sexual fantasy and expression in old age is abnormal, taboo or inappropriate”

(77). Crozier also questions the stereotypical social perception of older adults as drinking soft beverages and being pessimistic:

Who wants to hear about two old farts getting it on in the back seat of a Buick, in the garden among vermiculite,

in the kitchen where we should be drinking ovaltine and saying no? (ll. 1-6)

What is more, Crozier underscores the older persona and her partner’s creativity to engage in sexual activity in different places, such as in a car, the garden and the kitchen.

Therefore, their emplaced embodiment of sexuality in unusual places underscores their agency as older persons who deconstruct ageist stereotypes regarding old age. That is to stay that they empower themselves to continue engaging in sexual activity despite being older and thus not socio-culturally expected to do so. Finally, the last two lines of the poem defiantly conclude that “our old bodies [are] doing what you know / bodies do, worn and beautiful and shameless” (ll. 28-29). This ending constructs a final positive image of the external appearance of the ageing body, which, as gerontologist Mike Hepworth has stated, is a rare vision in Western culture (Stories of Ageing 50).

different implications in “The Goldberg Variations” (1988) and “A House to Live in”

(1988).

On the one hand, in “The Goldberg Variations,” Crozier presents sexuality as a routine activity in which the persona feels emotionless due to an unresolved mourning process. The persona describes her present moment as a time in which she is “so unconnected / to everything” (ll. 1-2). So much so that she is no longer moved by either natural elements such as light and rain, or non-human beings such as her cat. In other words, she is detached from both her emotions and senses and her environment. Thus, she is in a state of emotional disembodiment and dis-emplacement. Actually, the persona’s numbness seems to have been triggered by listening to Canadian pianist “Glenn Gould playing the Goldberg Variations / his last time” (ll. 4-5). In this vein, the poem appears as Crozier’s homage to Glenn Gould, who had passed away in 1982. As such, the persona’s feelings could be related to a bereavement process of sorts for Mr Gould’s death, who she seems to have admired deeply, as the following lines suggest:

. . . Gould’s fingers on ivory keys.

It isn’t Bach he’s playing

from the grave, the stopped heart.

. . .

Not Bach, but music before it became the least bit human. (ll. 13-20)

This quotation also shows how much the persona believed in the greatness of Glenn Gould’s skill as a pianist, since she implies that his performance of Bach’s Goldberg Variations returned music to its essence in a pre-human stage. According to philosopher Michael Cholbi, “[g]enuine grief at the deaths of those with whom we share no intimacies (admired political leaders or artists, say) is possible because what they do or have done is

perceived as enmeshed with what we desire for ourselves (or for the world at large)”

(496). The persona’s feeling of unconnectedness is so striking that she even finds it difficult to recognize the worth of her partner’s daily actions and loving attitude: “The endless variations of you, / making coffee, ordering seeds for the garden, / calling me upstairs to love” (ll. 6-8). Nevertheless, these lines point towards the speaker’s partner’s emotional support as a catalyst to help the persona manage grief. As philosophers Matthew Ratcliffe and Eleanor A. Byrne claim, “how grief is experienced depends on how we relate to particular people (the living and the dead) and to the social world more generally” (84). Therefore, the persona’s progress towards the resolution of grief, which is suggested at the end of the poem, seems to have been facilitated by her arousal to her partner’s caresses:

Is this ecstasy, this strange remoteness? Rain falling from such a distance. Gould’s Goldberg Variations. Your hands. The cold

cold blue. My skin. (ll. 21-25)

The rapture the persona feels suggests a combination of the excitement for Gould’s excellent music with the anticipation of her orgasm. As such, the poem conveys the complexities of human emotions, as we can feel both sadness and extreme joy at the same time.

On the other hand, “A House to Live in” depicts the inextricable relationship between the ungendered persona’s love and sexual desire for her partner, as the persona asserts that “[w]hen I say a name / it is yours / and now I can’t imagine / life without you”

(ll. 6-7), meaning without her partner. Such a statement attests to the persona’s internalisation of their relationship as a stable one. The persona’s relationship with her

partner is based on the persona’s sensorial experience of him / her, which suggests both sensuality and sexuality: “From your smell, / your touch, the taste / of your skin // I build a house” (ll. 8-11). These lines imply that the persona has a deep knowledge of her partner’s embodiment; a physicality that hints at the persona’s sexual arousal for her partner. In turn, the persona establishes a strong love relationship with her partner. This is suggested by both the house-building metaphor and the last two lines in the poem, namely “all the doors / swinging wide” (ll. 13-14), which depict the persona’s openness to love and to a long-term relationship with her partner. More specifically, such a house- building metaphor significantly features the partner’s body as a site of both pleasure and safety, thus becoming the body a place of sorts. Hence, the poem, as a whole, functions as an extended metaphor of the emplaced embodiment of emotional attachment, sensuality and sexuality in a couple who wishes to cohabitate. Particularly, the poem illustrates an instance of secure attachment in couples, which is “characterised by a sense of self-worth and striving for intimate and mutual nurturing relationships” (Mizrahi et al.

467).