April is nearly over. I cannot believe it's flown by so fast, and I have accomplished nothing I had planed to. I did write a little this month, even poetry, which makes me very happy. I have not yet decided if it is sharable yet. Probably not. I took a last minute train trip to see friends, with my head and heart tied in knots, still asleep after a marathon weekend of singing. I was inspired by them, by Penn station, by the sunshine. But I think things need a little work before anyone sees them, if I ever get to sharing. I am still reticent, but a friend's recent writing and sharing of his work inspires me.

There is also this list. I have read so few (27/100) I am ashamed!! Too much to get read these days!

The BBC apparently believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here:

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien I have only read it in part, still need to get around to finishing.
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible - Only Genesis, for class. I get bored every time I try,
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - I've read many plays and sonnets, but not everything. Performed a few, too.
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - One book shy of the series.
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy.
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth.
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac - I am backwards and read Dharma Bums, which is like a sequel
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt.
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare - Why is this on here, when the complete works are listed? I know Hamlet is important, but so is King Lear
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Today was not a good day. My head is fogged and heavy and thoughts can only try to trudge through the muck to connect to each other and be completed. I can blame the weather, but it is other things I just don't want to think about tonight. So, instead, poetry!
But since I'm in a mood - Akhmatova. No nonsense. Acmeistic words.

Anna Akhmatova

When I Write Poems

Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, January 29, 2005
Corrected May-June 2008
Translated text via Poetry Lover's Page

When I’m embraced by airy inspiration,
I am a bridge between the sky and earth.
Of all what heart high-values in creation
I am a king, when breathing with a verse!

Just if my soul wishes it, my fairy,
I shall give you the peaceful coast band,
Where, with a hum, the pinky sea is carrying
The dreaming tide to reach the dreaming land.

I can do all, just trust in me: I’m mighty;
I have the roots for kindness and for love;
And if I want, from clouds and from the lightning
I’ll make a cover your sweet bed above.

And I can, dear, create a word such special,
That it would change laws of the whole world,
To call again its own celebration
And stop the sun from fall in the night cold.

I’m all another in my inspiration,
I am a bridge between the sky and earth.
Of all what heart high-values in creation
I am a king, when breathing with a verse!

(Couldn't find the Russian version online)

This one from here. Site did the trans. I'm too tired to translate it myself right now.


Все мы бражники здесь, блудницы,
Как невесело вместе нам!
На стенах цветы и птицы
Томятся по облакам.

Ты куришь черную трубку,
Так странен дымок над ней.
Я надела узкую юбку,
Чтоб казаться еще стройней.

Навсегда забиты окошки:
Что там, изморозь или гроза?
На глаза осторожной кошки
Похожи твои глаза.

О, как сердце мое тоскует!
Не смертного ль часа жду?
А та, что сейчас танцует,
Непременно будет в аду.

1 января 1913



***

We are all heavy-drinkers and whores,
What a joyless, miserable crowd!
There are flowers and birds on the walls
And the birds all pine for a cloud.

You are smoking your old black pipe,
And the smoke looks strange over it.
The skirt that I’m wearing feels tight,
But I hope that it makes me look fit.

What’s the weather – thunder or ice?
Here, the windows are all boarded shut.
I examine your face and your eyes
Have the look of a sly cautious cat.

Oh, what sadness I’m feeling inside!
Am I waiting for death’s solemn bell?
And that girl, who’s been dancing all night, -
She will surely end up in hell.

January 1, 1913

National Poetry Month

It's National Poetry Month! Yay! My grand scheme last year for posting favorite poems fell through quickly and mightily. I am not so foolish to make more silly promises this time around.

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. ~Leonard Cohen

      National Poetry month is one of those celebrations acknowledged only by poets, poet nerds, and a handful of eager high school English teachers. Many people dislike poetry after forcefully learning "Ode on Grecian Urn" and some flowery Blake they never understand, or cast it in the drawer of things 'too high-brow for me.' (Full confession: I love Blake AND 'Grecian Urn'. Yes, I'm a poetry nerd) I want to read to these people the simple beauty of Whitman, the joy of Silverstein, the stark bluntness of Akhmatova. But you can't win them all. As long as there are creative people writing poetry, and grateful people reading it, we will end up alright.
      For me, poetry is an escape to a world where rhythm and meter rule thoughts. Even dark words of war and sorrow open beacons of light on a drab reality. I like my declarations of love and wonder and sadness to exist somewhere between word and song. Paint my life in flowing rhythm of verse!
      I am, of course, markedly jealous of those writers capable great poetry, Covetous of their mastery of language. My pathetic attempts are plentiful, and heroically mediocre at the bet of times. Even as the editor of the high school lit magazine I could never get beyond bland. It has, admittedly, been a long time since I wrote any verse. I don't know if my cluttered mind can sit still long enough anymore. It takes time, and patience.

      The poster for National Poetry Month 2011 is in striking contrast to last year's graphic explosion. Instead the colors are more muted and font simple. The main content is from A work by Elizabeth Bishop, which makes me both happy and proud. Bishop is a Vassar graduate (Class of 1934) and one of our more famous Alumna. And though Vassar is not my alma mater, I sill feel a sense of pride and ownership here. I grew up in the shadows of its brick buildings, often playing and learning on the campus. I had never heard of, nor read, anything by Bishop before coming to work at Vassar. This is not very odd since I knew very little of American poetry at all. Here we have an art installation of benched inscribed with snippets of her work that line a winding path. Since learning of her I have read some of her poetry, though none of her prose. I enjoy her work. Her style is clean and flowing, but direct. I love that she described the places she traveled to, taking us there with her not just visually but emotionally. Though to the point, I feel like there is still a between the lines to read. It feels classic and contemporary all at once. I still no very little about her life, but at the moment I am satisfied with a sitting down occasionally with an anthology and learning about her through her writing.
      This year marks the 100th anniversary of her life, and she was our Poet Laureate at one point,so the quote on the poster is not random. It just so happens that it coincides with Vassar's sesquicentennial celebrations. I am sure that the administration is very proud. I would like to take the opportunity to share some Bishop here.

The Map
Land lies in water; it is shadowed green.
Shadows, or are they shallows, at its edges
showing the line of long sea-weeded ledges
where weeds hang to the simple blue from green.
Or does the land lean down to life the sea from under,
drawing it unperturbed around itself?
Along the fine tan sandy shelf
is the land tugging at the sea from under?

Teh shadow of Newfoundland lies flat and still.
Labrador's yellow, where the moony Eskimo
has oiled it. We can stroke these lovely bays,
under a glass as if they were expected to blossom,
or as if to provide a clean cage for invisible fish.
The names of seashore towns run out to the sea,
the names of cities cross the neighboring mountains
--the printer here experiencing the same excitement
as when emotion too far exceeds its cause.
These peninsulas take the water between the thumb and finger
like women feeling for the smoothness of yard-goods.

Mapped water are more quiet that the land is,
lending the land their waves' own confirmation:
and Norway's hare runs south in agitation,
profiles investigate the sea, where land is.
Are they assigned, or can the countries pick their colors?
--What suits the character or the native waters best.
Topography displays no favorites; North's as near as West.
More delicate than the historians' are the map-makers' colors.

~ from North and South, 1946

LINKS:
Elizabeth Bishop @ poets.org
Elizabeth Bishop wiki
National Poetry Month

Considerations of Wordsworth and Death

April came and went, and I got out one post about National Poetry month and one poem. Not my plan in the least. April was a little more hectic than I'd hoped. But one does not need a month honoring the art to share it!

A favorite William Wordsworth poem of mine is "Ode: Intimations of Immortality From Recollections of Early Childhood" written between 1802 and 1804 (wiki article). I first read this poem after hearing mention one section (lines 180-191):

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

I have used this portion in notes to friends and colleagues who are coping with recent death in their lives. The poem as a whole deals with death in relation to life andBut this one section is full of hope and positivity about losing someone you love. A co-worker who was coping with the death of her mother came to tell me how much comfort she took in these words.

After thinking of this quote, I sought out the entire work. It is a poignant reflection on life and death, especially with consideration of how a child perceives it. Death for a child can be a very curious event. A family member or friends is there one day, and gone the next. If the death is kept from the child (Grandpa went to sleep. Rover went to live on a farm) it becomes even more mysterious. When I was a small child my family did not lie about death to me. With so many older relatives it was a common enough occurrence. My mother did not often bring me to funerals and wakes unless they were people I knew and were close to. I remember thinking that death was a horrible, dark thing that took grandparents away from me. If only I'd been handed some Wordsworth back then.

I am not an English major, a poetry critic, or a Wordsworth expert. I am a enjoyer of verse. I do read poems for critical and deeper meanings, but I am by no means adept at it. I love this work because of the rolling process of thought it goes through. It is as if we snuck in to the poet's mind while they were lazily thinking.

THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell'd in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth.

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong:
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every beast keep holiday;—
Thou Child of Joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy
Shepherd-boy!

Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,
My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning,
And the children are culling
On every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm:—
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
—But there's a tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have look'd upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a mother's mind,
And no unworthy aim,
The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.

Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A six years' darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learnèd art;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral;
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little actor cons another part;
Filling from time to time his 'humorous stage'
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,
That Life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy soul's immensity;
Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,—
Mighty prophet! Seer blest!
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a master o'er a slave,
A presence which is not to be put by;
To whom the grave
Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight
Of day or the warm light,
A place of thought where we in waiting lie;
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest—
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
To perish never:
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound!
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquish'd one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
(via Bartleby.com - Complete Poetical works 1880; Oxford Book of English Verse)

До свиданья, друг мой, до свиданья

До свиданья, друг мой, до свиданья.
Милый мой, ты у меня в груди.
Предназначенное расставанье
Обещает встречу впереди.

До свиданья, друг мой, без руки, без слова,
Не грусти и не печаль бровей,-
В этой жизни умирать не ново,
Но и жить, конечно, не новей.
Сергей Александрович Есенин (1925)

Transliteration:
Do svidan'ya, drug moi, do svidan'ya.
Milyi moi, ty u menya v grudi.
Prednaznachennoe rasstavan'e
Obeshaet vstrechu vperedi.

Do svidan'ya, drug moi, bez ruki,
bez slova, Ne grusti i ne pechal' brovei,-
V etoi zhizni umirat' ne novo,
No i zhit', konechno, ne novei.


Translation (by myself):
Goodbye, my friend, goodbye
My dearest, I keep yyou in my heart
Our preordained parting
Promises future meeting.

Goodbye, my friend, no holding hands, no words spoken
Do not grieve and do not frown
In this life, to die is not new
But also to live, of course, is no novelty.


This was the first poem I ever learned and recited in Russian class. It is dark and depressing, yes, and at the time that truly matched my personality. But it is also beautiful and poignant.
Sergei Esenin was a fragile artist. He was an alcoholic and depressed. Some say this poem was his farewell, a suicide note. It holds a special place in my heart, as an introduction to the Russian literature I love so much.

April is National Poetry Month. I shall post poetry. I love poetry.

In high school I got involved with our literary club. Meetings were fun - we all wrote on some topic the club leaders came up with and then shared. I met the creative people, the weirdos, the folks far smarter and more talented than me. I wanted to write like that. I tried, and failed. Even though I eventually became Editor-in-Chief (I'm that person that rises to responsibility because no one else will) I never became a good writer in the creative arts (I can rock a research paper, though). I had fun, though, creating weird short stories about a sleepwalker and books that fought back. I wrote poems about coffee and heroin overdose that were actually published in the magazine.
Being an editor for two years exposed me to the core of high school lit mag hell - bad teen love poems. Really. We'd meet at someone's house to go through the piles of submissions, sorting poetry, prose, and art into piles of great, good, please burn. These were fun times - reading the worst we could find out loud so everyone could share in the torturous pain, pointing out how many were written in some neon gel pen. Forced awkward weir rhymes flowed like cottage cheese over rocks. Piles of them. Like American Idol, we tossed the middle bad early and kept the worst to share with friends. Cruel to the writers? Perhaps. But I like to think that those people grew up, laughed at themselves, and vowed never to write poetry ever again.


http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/41

Song of Whitman - an introduction to American verse

I have indeed started Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. The inspiration budded from an exhibit and lecture on him and John Burroughs. Knowing nothing about the lives or writings of either, I found it all v. interesting. Other little moments cumulated to my last post and my need to read this early Whitman classic.

Being such a slow reader I am still in the early portions of "Song of Myself" but I can't help but love it. It's been a while since I really sunk my teeth in to a long verse work and I'm enjoying the extra brain power it takes to process it all. He has this style unlike anything I've read. I guess I just read too many classics (he was so highly criticized when he was first publishing for not writing like everyone else).
The short pieces in the Inscriptions section say so much in so little. I am using a borrowed copy, but I feel that I must dig out my copy (I am told we own it, and I assume that we would) just to line it with book darts on sections that really hit me. I keep forgetting my little tin of them and can't bear to put any post-its in this 1912 copy I am using! Certain passages make me smile in spite of myself. Others seem like he was in my head when he wrote them (only my words are never as beautiful or graceful as his). In 2008 I find such meaning in these old words. That, to me, is the true power of a great writer - timelessness. I know that in his own time critics thought him crude, perverse, and near pornographic. I see passages that may have seemed that way then, but today of course seem tame. Sometimes it takes a sharp and shocking image to make an idea clear - often a tame idea, at that!


WHEN I READ THE BOOK
When I red the book, the biography famous,
And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man's life?
And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life
(As if any man really knew aught of my life,
Why even I myself I often think know little of nothing of my real life,
Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections
I seek for my own use to trace out here.)

This came from the man before John Burroughs read Leaves of Grass, before he wrote copious pages on the life of Whitman and defensing his work. How ironic! Barely read in his own time, Whitman today is considered such an American treasure, so beloved! How terrible, too, that at age 24 I am only reading him for the first time (save for "O Captain! My Captain!" which I should have learned in school BUt I think I read it on my own. It was in a book called What you 5th grader ought to know something that I feel should be given to public school boards. I mean, who hasn't at least heard of it?? It, too, is in this book! I never knew!)

Why isn't he more widely taught? We teach English poetry so much in schools, why not the poets of this country? While you're banging through "The Road Less Taken" add some Whitman in the mix for comparison. He lived and wrote during such a fascinating and dynamic period in our history, making his own path through the wilderness of writing. I didn't take American literature in college (Renaissance, Japanese, and Russian) but I feel like he should be covered in high school. I think that his straightforward style would be v. teachable to that age, and appealing. I don't think that "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is really the style that will inspire students in this day and age to write poetry. It is beautiful, of course. I loved it at once. But I know that any poem beginning with 'Thou' automatically makes half the students roll their eyes or fall asleep. Whitman feels, at times, like he could have written it last month, not a hundred years ago.


Now I will do nothing but listen,
To accrue what I hear into this song, to let sounds contribute toward it.
...


I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd,
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

So they show their relations to me and I accept them,
They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their possession.


I will continue this journey through American poetry. It feels almost like a journey through myself.

Leaves of Whitman are falling, it seems

Something is afoot.
Synchronicity, I think people call it.
Someone or something in the universe wants me to read Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.
I must do this now.