今天朱偉誠在上課時談到，有位同學把“In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus One Day”一詩中的speaker寫成那位在酒吧引吭高歌的妓女，並且強調說，某些同學如果在作業裡選這首詩的要注意，可以說那位妓女是the speaker in the poem，但是不能把她說成the speaker of the poem，同時還看了我一眼。我不明白牠看我一眼究竟是什麼意思，我並未把speaker弄錯，而且，我的作業裡並未將這首詩列入討論，牠該不會又用剪貼拼湊的方式把我比成「妓女」吧﹖以下紅色字體是我寫給台大外文系吳雅鳳教授的信件內容，足以我之所以會如此判斷是有原因的，說明如下：

我一向很喜歡在上課時發表意見，只要有機會發言，我通常不會讓它錯過，今天(民國九十六年四月二日)的「文學作品讀法」課程當然也不例外。朱偉誠講到Marilyn Nelson “How I Discovered Poetry” (Our textbook, pp. 673)的第八、九行之際，提了一個問題，問了其他幾位同學並未得到令人滿意的答案，結果，最後被我答對了，哈哈哈，很好玩﹗我在回答該問題時，基於「前車之鑑」，眼睛沒看朱偉誠，因為前一首詩是Matthew Arnold “Dover Beach” (Our textbook, pp. 671)，詩的內容是說話者告訴他的情人彼此對對方要真誠。我當時認為，如果注視朱偉誠的話，可能又會被他會錯意、做出不當或者過度的解讀。後來他問起另一份作業(去劇院看一齣戲劇，然後寫心得的那一份)進行得如何。於是我自告奮勇地回答。是他一直不斷地追問，我才仔細回答，要不然，我本來只說：「我已經買票了」，如此而已。不信的話，我有上課的錄音資料為憑。該檔案容量太大，很難以email方式傳遞(我剛才試過)，如果妳有興趣聽的話，我可以複製一份給妳。我認為回答這樣的問題不必特別有所顧慮，因此就很自然地注視朱偉誠。前面所說的「前車之鑑」，指的是三月十九日上課時我的發言所引起的軒然大波。如果我不對此加以解釋，等一下可能會有王八蛋惡意造謠說我是「間諜」。在此引述我三月十九日當天寫給雅鳳伯樂的書信內容為證。如下所示：

Let me tell you something interesting that will make you laugh to stomachache. Can you imagine how Professor Chu (朱偉誠教授) looked, when I answered his question about what “Harlot” meant in William Blake’s London by uttering the word “prostitute” today (March 19^th, 2007)? He looked like a fool, seriously and wrongly thinking that I was implying myself. More interestingly, he even thought of me as a fool. Ha…. What a fool! Was I describing myself as a prostitute? Ha…. How ridiculous it was! I was merely talking about the content in the text, rather than myself. I wonder why he thought that way. I always like to speak up my opinion in class. Furthermore, I love Blake very much, so I felt like saying something about it. Ha…. What a fool!

另外，再附上我的作業內容，證明我的作業裡並未將這首詩列入討論，如下：

The Time, Place and Tone of the Speaker

in the Three Poems I Chose?

I. Letters in the Family by Adrienne Rich

This is an epistolary poem, in which three monologues are presented in the form of letters written respectively by three female speakers who are in great danger – one writing from Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War, another from Yugoslavia behind the Nazi lines during World War II, the other from present-day South Africa under apartheid, a system of racial segregation that was enforced from 1948 to 1994.

There are similarities between the three. One of the remarkable characteristics they have in common is that all of the three speakers are talking to the people who have comparatively intimate relationships with them: to her parents, to her earthbound friend, and to her children. Besides, all of them are engaged in dangerous missions, but narrate their at-the-moment situations, feelings and viewpoints on the wars during wartime with a glimmer of hope. The reader may feel they will highly probably survive, because they all speak in an optimistic tone and take an active attitude toward life even in great danger. For instance, in the first letter Rochelle says that her right arm is as strong as anyone’s. She even can appreciate the strengths of other partners by stating that all languages are spoken here, possibly suggesting that everyone here has his or her own style. As she mentions, she is happy. For another thing, Esther, the second speaker, teases and also praises her partner Chana. She says, “I’ve hated you for your dropping ecstatically in free-fall, in the training, your look, dragged on the ground, of knowing precisely why you were there.” For the last thing, the mother visions the picture of the future when they gather together again, by telling her children, “At the end of this hard road/ we’ll sit all together at one meal/ and I’ll tell you everything: the names/ of our comrades, how the letters/ were routed to you, why I left,” and so on. All of them are brave and have sense of duty as fighters, even though they are female, because they know very well what they are doing.

II. You Didn’t Fit by Susan Musgrave

The speaker addresses this poem to her father after his death. But on no account can the reader exactly know where the address takes place. Even so, the speaker recollects two events that happened in the past when her father was alive, by which she explains the reasons why she thinks he didn’t fit. One of the events took place at the court, the other at the office parties.

At the very beginning, the speaker tells her father that he wouldn’t fit in his coffin, with the implication that he may not be the person who easily got along well with others when alive. But his “not fitting” was no surprise to her.

The incident of his false teeth triggers the disputes on the court between her father and the dentist. But would you see a guy as the kind of person who does not fit just because he has been taken to court for his refusal to pay the dentist after he found that even his third set of false teeth didn’t fit and that “none of them fit properly?” The speaker may not think about trying to convince the reader that it was not her father’s fault. But the reader may not believe that her father didn’t fit, since it was not his fault. Also, reading the second stanza, the reader can clearly relish the fun of skillful usage of the pun “fit.”

After that, in the third stanza, she explicates further the situation, by saying, “The Court, I remember, returned/ your teeth, now marked an exhibit./ You were dismissed with costs – I never understood . The teeth were/ terrible. We liked you better without them.” It has become increasingly apparent that it was unfair for him to suffer the loss for it, which makes the last three lines in the second stanza “death with a bright face and teeth that fit perfectly” look particularly ironic. Would you ever think he did not fit, because he was not powerful enough to fight against the unfairness and injustice caused by those who wield their power with their wealth and social status? The reader pays compassion for him.

The speaker and her father are very similar in that they both have “bones,” which may be the main element that makes them unable to fit in so well the society or the world that is in power of the rich and the powerful. In addition, it seems that the speaker and her father have very strong self-consciousness about their own feelings and principles, so she saw how the corny men hurt her father but loved her harder than ever; likewise, her father was secretly happy when he found that she did not fit, either, even though he had suggested that she must fit in.

Seemingly, the speaker makes slight criticism of her father for the sake of his “never fitting in anywhere,” but later the reader realizes that actually she functions as a witness who testifies, unconsciously or intentionally, that her father did not do anything wrong about the dispute. She feels sympathy for and may even feel angry about the injustice done to her father. We would have no doubt that she has empathy for him and likes his quality of “not fitting,” because she and her family all agree with her mother’s statement that “this is the last straw.”

III. Persimmons by Li-Young Lee

Different time periods and different places interact with one another in this poem, which makes all the scenes it depicts vivid and dynamic. In the first stanza, the event occurred at elementary school when the speaker was in sixth grade. The switch from how to eat persimmons to the speaker’s sexual relationship with Donna in the yard is made in the second and third stanzas. The fourth stanza brings the reader back to his memory of the past in which he recollects the words that also got him into trouble. Then the scene shifts again into what occurred at the primary school in his childhood in the fifth stanza. The sixth and seven stanzas skillfully connect persimmons to the sun. The two moved from the cellar to his bedroom where a cardinal sang, the sun, the sun. The following stanzas talk about his memory of his father and of the interactions and dialogues they made at home.

The main theme is persimmons, so the reader can find that some parts of the speaker’s memory of the past closely related to persimmons are linked to and mingled with the presence. For example, what occurred at school is always narrated in past tense, while the way to choose persimmons in present tense, and so forth. This alternating skill makes the events that happened in the past vividly appear in front of the reader as if they were still proceeding, especially when the speaker is talking with his father and what they say are written in Italic type.

The speaker frankly reveals in the first stanza the kind of embarrassing experience that he was slapped the back of his head and made stand in the corner as punishment by his teacher Mrs. Walker at elementary school for his failure to discern “persimmons” from “precision.” Poor little boy! What a cruel teacher! How could she do that to him! The speaker must have cared about the incident very much, or he would not have kept it so clearly in mind to date. Even so, he knows how to transfer his weaknesses to strengths by showing his “precise” know-how of choosing ripe persimmons and tasting sweet ones in a confident tone in the second stanza. That means he is the person of self-assurance.

Next, he uses present tense to depict in detail his memory of first sexual experience. Let us take the first two sentences for example. “Donna undresses, her stomach is white. In the yard, dewy and shivering with crickets, we lie naked, face-up, face-down.” Reading this passage is very embarrassing to the reader who has never conducted sexual behavior like me, but the speaker does not care so much about revealing his secret. What makes him think of Donna all of a sudden? It is because the process of having sexual relationship with the girl is similar to that of eating persimmons from peeling the skin to swallowing the meat stated in the previous stanza.

Then in a playful tone, he mentions his experience of keeping silence on purpose when watching the other classmates eating the fruit that has not been ripe yet. It says, “Mrs. Walker brought a persimmon to class/ and cut it up/ so one could taste/ a Chinese apple. Knowing/ it wasn’t ripe or sweet, I didn’t eat/ but watched the other faces.”

After that, he conveys his subtle and deep sense of connection between persimmons and his parents. From his memory of his mother, the reader feels sensuous pleasure in the warmth of the sun. It says, “My mother said every persimmon has a sun/ inside, something golden, glowing,/ warm as my face.”

And then the speaker sheds highlight on his father, a much more powerful figure in his mind than his mother. The memories must be precious for the speaker, because he goes into elaborate details about exactly how he feels on and reacts to the remarks and feelings of his father’s. The tone changes into a sad one when the speaker shows sympathy for his father whose eyes have gone blind. “He raises both hands to touch the cloth,/ asks, Which is this?”

It ends up with his father’s words, so powerful that the reader can sense intensity of this poem. It says, “Oh, the feel of the wolftail on the silk,/ the strength, the tense/ precision in the wrist./ I painted them hundreds of times/ eyes closed. These I painted blind./ Some things never leave a person:/ scent of the hair of one you love,/ the texture of persimmons,/ in your palm, the ripe weight.” It is wise of the speaker to place stress on these words in Italic type. Besides, in doing so he makes an interesting connection between the main subject “persimmons” and another keyword “precision” that acts as an indispensable foil in this poem.