Revolving Days.

the suggests similar use of continuous time and thee

he tite of poem
interrelations of time, memory, and place that signals the past as existing inside
the present and vice versa. The intersection is the source of the experience of the
able it. While
poet speaker and the emotional clarity the speakeris
in many ways this is a simpler poem( the subject of loss or failure in love) a
to attain about
v a l u a b l e c o n t r a s tc a n b e made to Nerudas " Tonight."on the same subject.

Nerudas poem comprised the problematic of (what we had already discussed in

class) the absent female volce or agency, male gaze that sets it up as a very male
tradition of writing about love. As a contrast Maloufs speaker( and the speakers
lost love) Is ungendered and while it may not have Nerudas evocative redolent
stars shiver in the distance") but Maloufs conversational
images("blue
style( reminiscent of Donne's love poetry or the poetry of the contemporary Philip
Larkin though Larkin was very consciously anti-Romantic) in Revolving Days and
some of the lines in the poem speakto the overwrought state of being in love such
that boom under the pocket of shirt" or the
as
"urgencies taken
a
to
sensual intimacy(such
as
"..we have not yet back the life we promised pour into each others
mouths") of what is termed as a mistake but "has lasted'" and retained its power
over the poet speaker as the title of
the poem suggests even though as the poema
indicates the love may now be one-sided. The poems( Revolving Days) ending,
of hope
sense of
resignation
the
perhaps, a
mixture of hope and denial is poignant or
suggestive of speakers continulng pain and not without a sense ofbewrynessfor
a hint of
case of Tonightofpainful
self-mockery while in thethe the
as
last
it might
line.. "these
the
may be
Speaker, the pain is diminished by grandiosity
the last lines I write for her" etc. Again this is how I feel and perhaps many of you
disagree.
In Revolving Days the poet speaker is reliving/imagining a memory of youthful love
of the speaker itself.. "knotting my tie in a
presents
as an
older version image are
or

mirror .iIn
the next room you
waiting.while I choose between changes to
The
surprise you. mouth next stanza continuing9 the line of thoughtare"Revolving days. My
worids.
heart is in my again". Past/Present/Dream/Memory contiguous
scene or memory) does
There is no drama in the the ending as scene(imagined
not lead to a meeting( with the lover in the next room) or for the speaker to square
up to the lover. writing instead to notity his[if one can use the pronoun since the

text does not indicate any gender) presence but unobtrusively in a gesture of
denial or self-abasement thatis however not without a sense of self knowledge

without wry humour conveys thee speakers pain but concealed by

a
The ending not
lightironictouch. Naturally this is true of all relationships or the representation of
relationships)
thelr histories but alsoto be
maytend
which seen paticularly connected to gay and
be fraught with difficulty,
relationships or

inevitable failure(
uncertainty even
obviously on account of the soclal situation).
Can we see Revolving Days as an example of gay poetry? Certainly some elements
of gay
identity are here noticeable-the
of
attention to colourful shirts(" What
remember is the colour the shirts"), conscious self-fashioning, unrequited love
the inevitable failure or loss("We never write ). of
or
course one can argue that
these elements are present in heterosexual contexts as well. Malouf in particular
has never directly to his gay
referred identity In his work though he has been
always been open about his own sexuality. Perhaps this is about the examination
the
of love in past and the
acceptance thatit
will continue to
resonate/trouble our
minds. Hence the title Revolving Days. There is pain and yearning but also an ironic
acceptance of it Yet it is also hard not to think of it in relation to homosexual desire
it a specific and set of
or
relationships. The term gay( has history connotations)
may not be useful.The
use of sucha term can limit the poem's expanse and not
of its it can and painful
Ust in terms potential universality but also mask the trials
histories of homosexual relationships that the poem does signal.