school paper

I was reading an article, an excerpt which says:

Bedecked with photographs, silk screens, oil paintings, metalwork, furniture and other mixed media, the space feels like a confused grandmother's living room, minus the doilies.

Isn't it great? Some people might say that poetry is all about doilies and stuff so personal only the writers themselves would know what they're talking about.

In this case, it's literally true. The doily allusion is to American poet Elizabeth Bishop's poem, Filling Station. It's great when I see stuff like this that I actually know. I wonder how many things I've read that alluded to some other works that just slipped my eyes? It's no wonder why we wonder how to educate children, whether to teach them to memorize literature by rote or to have them explore their own connections.

Pertinent excerpt referring to the doily (with explanatory note below):

Some comic books provide
the only note of color—
of certain color. They lie
upon a big dim doily
draping a taboret
(part of the set), beside
a big hirsute begonia.

Why the extraneous plant?
Why the taboret?
Why, oh why, the doily?
(Embroidered in daisy stitch
with marguerites, I think,
and heavy with gray crochet.)

Somebody embroidered the doily.
Somebody waters the plant,
or oils it, maybe. Somebody
arranges the rows of cans
so that they softly says:
ESSO—SO—SO—SO
to high-strung automobiles.
Somebody loves us all.

Basically, the entire poem, including that which I did not copy, was talking about a fueling station where the father and sons work on automobiles. The speaker noticed that despite the filthiness of the place, there are still signs that somebody (a woman, a mother, a loving figure of femininity) still tries to keep the station tidy, arranging the cans, embroidering the doily, otherwise coloring the station up.

It is not what I would say is my favorite poem, but it is nice when I can catch allusions to poems while I read a newspaper.