"Miss Gee" by W.H. Auden (poetry reading)

What makes this poem so chilling is that what befell Miss Gee is so commonplace and the characterisation of the medical profession is so accurate.

The bicycle would most likely have been an early Raleigh 3-speed which had a Sturmey Archer hub with a coaster brake.

Doctor Thomas's speculation that frustrated afflatus was the cause of Miss Gee's cancer would still occur to many doctors today. Bad ideas take a longer than people to die. Doctors like to think in terms of cause and effect. Samuel Johnson said, "It is incident to physicians, I am afraid, beyond all other men, to mistake subsequence for consequence."

The latest opinion would be that Miss Gee's habit of wearing clothes buttoned to the neck deprived her of sunlight and therefore of Vitamin D which protects against cancer.

For more than half-a-century studies have shown that people who maintain a slight suntan have the lowest risk of cancer. The medical profession has chosen to ignore this evidence until quite recently. Unfortunately sunburn or excessive exposure to the sun is associated with melanoma, the most dangerous kind of skin cancer. Nevertheless brief, frequent exposure to sunshine does decrease the incidence and this pleasant prophylaxis is now back in favour.

Nevertheless there are still those who advise people to avoid all sun exposure and slather all exposed skin surfaces with sunblocker. Do they think we evolved as troglodytes?

The concept that something can be good for you in moderation and bad for you in excess seems to be a difficult one for Doctors to comprehend, in spite of the fact that it's almost always true. Many things are good for you in moderate amounts: exercise, vitamins, criticism, deprivation, cocaine, heroin, tobacco, strychnine, arsenic etc. - well, the last few according to learned Doctors of the past.

You would think that Doctors who prescribe in exact quantities, such as one teaspoonful of medicine thrice daily, would understand this. Too much of anything is bad for us: that is what "too much" means.

The portrait of Miss Gee is actually Van Gogh's mother.

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Tags:

• Miss
• Gee
• W.H.
• Auden

[KnightHawkXIV]

Now that's not the first thing one should listen to on waking up in the morning as I did just now. Kinda depressing but quite......... Anyway,thanks once again for leading us down this seldom traveled path with its haunted houses with frightening vistas, crumbling castles of forgotten past and humble huts erected on broken dreams. Thanks!

[SpokenVerse]

As Kingsley Amis said, "Nice things are nicer than nasty ones"

[pikit1a]

Already I'm googling cancer...I think I'm Miss Gee! Frightening.

[audiofile7]

I'll take the sun.

[16nwb1]

@residentevilgoddess

same here mines in 3days hope u did well in urs :)

[residentevilgoddess]

ye im doing this for my AS

level English Literature

This reading really helped - thanks!

[vudu8ball]

Death reduces us to garbage. Made me cry.

[J999ACK]

I adore this poem. Such a powerful statement about how buttoning up your emotions will lead to such a downfall! Amazing poem by an Amazing poet!!

[Smallenface]

I just did an essay on this piece for AS English Literature, and i must say its a really powerful poem, i really engaged with it.

[SketchRoomAccount]

You've got a great voice for this, but I wonder, why has nobody sang it to St Jame's Infirmary like the poem states? It seems like such a simple idea to do, I just tried it myself, and it fits perfectly.

[thallassocracy]

I sometimes think Auden is closer to Bukowski than many people realise. In both cases the persona of callous b*stard allows the poet to feint his reader into feeling compassion for people the poem seems indifferent to.

I think, for once, you might be too nice a person to read this to its best advantage. I don't think you properly make fun of the inadequacy of Ms. Gee's few spoken lines.

Or perhaps that is a meta-technique you have slily slipped by me.

[TomRAFC]

a superb reader, you got a wonderfull knack for spinning a tale. I'm also loving the long paragraphs you always put in your sidebar these days.