The following is motivated from him completely opening my mind. I'd humbly like to try to pass on a few lessons he has taught me. Paying it forward if you will...
Why do we read? Is it to escape our commute or our world? For just a moment? Is it because we salivate when a lyrical line rolls over us? Is it the enjoyment of art for art's sake? Is it to be entertained? To laugh? What do you like? Why? What do you get out of it? What do you go to it for?
We are continually engaged in the process of creating our own canon. Who is in your library?
Lately, I have been opening up to poetry. I know. Poetry...oh noetry! I realize the general consensus on poetry is something like, "Ugh, I just don't get it. What are they even saying?" But even in this, we return to the theme of pleasure. Isn't there also pleasure in working to achieve understanding? In reaching the light at the end of the tunnel?
Below is a poem. I want you to read it two times. Please?
First we will read it the depressing way. It is written in third person. But is that just a rouse because the author doesn't want to subject himself to the intimacy of first person? What is he telling us about himself? Should he be on suicide watch?
The Snow Man
Wallace Stevens
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Second reading. We are going to go the philosophical route. You are going to need to channel your inner Zen. What is reality? Is reality the constructs we project onto the world? If we reject those constructs, what is left? Is the reality of Winter the feelings we attribute to it or is it feeling-less?
The Snow Man
Wallace Stevens
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
English lesson over. In case you are still reading (congrats!) and want more, check out this site. Or this one!
"I am tired, Beloved, of chaffing my heart/against/the want of you"
Amy Lowell
Amy Lowell
Okay, I had to read that poem THREE times to even partially understand it...How embarassing.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a big poetry fan myself, and I'm ashamed - given my enthusiasm for the way Dickens or Hardy string words together in their books.
But I'd say that generally I read to escape. When you come across that rare book where you're literally devouring every word....that's the best.
Coincidentally I am lately sharing poems with a fellow Hardy fan, so here is MY favourite poem:
The Newcomer's Wife
Thomas Hardy
He paused on the sill of a door ajar
That screened a lively liquor-bar,
For the name had reached him through the door
Of her he had married the week before.
"We called her the Hack of the Parade;
But she was discreet in the games she played;
If slightly worn, she's pretty yet,
And gossips, after all, forget:
"And he knows nothing of her past;
I am glad the girls' in luck at last;
Such ones, though stale to native eyes,
Newcomers snatch at as a prize."
"Yes, being a stranger he sees her blent
Of all that's fresh and innocent,
Nor dreams how many a love-campaign
She had enjoyed before his reign!"
That night there was the spalsh of a fall
Over the slimy harbour-wall:
They searched, and at the deepest place
Found him with crabs upon his face.
Thomas Hardy at his best.
When it comes to poetry I fall back on my staple, Dorothy P.:
ReplyDeleteBy the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying -
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.
The irony. The cutting wit. That's my D.