{"id":849,"date":"2015-04-19T14:54:35","date_gmt":"2015-04-19T21:54:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/?p=849"},"modified":"2015-04-19T14:54:35","modified_gmt":"2015-04-19T21:54:35","slug":"old-age-has-its-advantages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/?p=849","title":{"rendered":"Old age has its advantages"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu<\/p><\/div>\n

I’m taking a break this week from tales of my youthful travels to share a poem I wrote as homework in a Stanford Online class: 10 Pre-Modern Women Poets<\/a>, taught by Eavan Boland<\/a>. This week we studied “Saturday: The Smallpox” by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.<\/a> Written in 1747 in the voice of Flavia, a young beauty whose face is disfigured by the disease, the poem is a sad satire on the priorities of that era’s fashionable society. Our assignment was to write a poem using the heroic couplet form in which\u00a0“Saturday: The Smallpox” was written.<\/p>\n

Lady Mary, who was herself afflicted with smallpox, was a pioneer in vaccination for this dreaded disease. I find it particularly discouraging that 267 years later, people are still arguing about the value of vaccination against measles, a disease that nearly killed my father when he was a child.<\/p>\n

However, my poem isn’t about the ravages of disease, but rather the emphasis on fashion still rampant today. It was a lot of fun to write.<\/p>\n

A Grandmother Responds to Flavia<\/strong><\/p>\n

Advancing age has this one recompense,
\nThat I can clothe myself with common sense.
\nInvisible already to the young,
\nI\u2019m from the prison of convention sprung,
\nAt last to dress as I have lately dressed,
\nI don\u2019t wear heels; I\u2019ve never seen the point
\nOf teetering at risk to ankle joint.
\nMy fingernails are bare of chip-prone paint,
\nMy hair goes where it wills, without restraint.
\nWhen grayness first revealed itself, I bought
\nSome dye, but soon discovered what I thought
\nWas beauty was instead a bathroom mess,
\nDespite my brave attempts at carefulness.
\nFor lack of make-up, blame my allergies,
\nMy nose rubbed naked every time I sneeze.
\nFor lack of lipstick, blame Ms Magazine,
\nWhich in the Seventies proclaimed with spleen
\nThat face paint was an INEQUALITY;
\nIf men don\u2019t have to do it, why should we?
\nSo now my silver hair surrounds a face
\nWhere age\u2019s wrinkles have an honored place.
\nI am content with plainness; jeans and boots
\nShall walk me earthward to my simple roots.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m taking a break this week from tales of my youthful travels to share a poem I wrote as homework in a Stanford Online class: 10 Pre-Modern Women Poets, taught by Eavan Boland. This week we studied “Saturday: The Smallpox” by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Written in 1747 in the voice of Flavia, a young […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,251,7,5],"tags":[410,252,254,253,255],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=849"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":889,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849\/revisions\/889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}