Quote:
Originally Posted by The Unfan
That is the most hideously cornball wall of text ever.
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Heh heh, Unfan, yes I agree "Garden" is somewhat corny. Thanks to your input, I changed one line slightly to remove one kernel from the corn ear: I replaced the words "fig leaf" with the word "shyness," because "fig leaf" always made me snort and roll my eyes when I read it. Thanks for your feedback.
The rest of the poem, I think, will have to stay in its hideously cornball state. While I suspect you probably think the whole thing is cornball, are there particular lines that seem worse than others? If so, I can scrutinize those lines more carefully and reconsider them. Although, really, I almost feel proud to have written something that you feel is "the most hideously cornball wall of text ever," because to create anything that will forever throughout all time overshadow all other cornball texts is quite an achievement!
Say, what songs do you know of that talk about the Adam and Eve story? I'm curious because I know there must be many "Adam and Eve" songs out there, and I'd like to read how other people incorporate this tale into a song.
When I wrote "Garden" I enjoyed combining the topic of betrayal in a relationship with the multiple betrayals that I observe in the story of Adam and Eve. I find this genesis story interesting because the whole premise of Christianity appears to be based on the idea that humans disappointed the deity, and thus the deity, to punish them, doled out mortality, toil and strife, illness and hardship (and labor pains!)...and ever since then humans require "forgiveness" for their "flawed" behaviors and choices.
One betrayal in this genesis story, I feel, is that Adam essentially blamed Eve for having given him the fruit of knowledge that she picked, even though he bit it, too...so he was a willing participant.
Yet the largest betrayal, I feel, is in the actions of the deity itself: knowing that its creations (Adam and then Eve) lacked knowledge of right and of wrong, the deity still placed the Tree of Knowledge (of right and wrong) in the garden, forbidding them to eat its fruit, and then punished them when they ate it, even though the deity *knew* the humans lacked knowledge of right and of wrong and so would be expected not to know that taking the fruit was wrong, even when told it was forbidden.
The genesis story is a Catch-22 for Adam and Eve: they wanted the fruit of knowledge of right and wrong because they lacked such knowledge, yet without the knowledge of right and wrong they would not understand that taking the fruit would be a "wrong" behavior. What does this say about a god that would punish its creations for being naive when it made them that way?
In "Garden" a similar betrayal is going on where the man blames the woman for being naive and for believing him when he said he loved her and wanted to build his life with her, come what may. He also blames her for being willing to be sexual (and the story then shows that he raped her).
In the song, the man's betrayal of the woman is similar to the betrayal of women by men who fault women for having sex on the first date (causing the men to "lose respect" for the women)...although of course if the woman deserves to be looked down upon for this then the man should look down on himself, as well.
--Erica