I'm a little underwhelmed by Louise Gluck's Averno, but that's okay. She has a few killer lines:
"It does me on good; violence has changed me." (#2)
Mmmm-kay! Better yet, a concisely bitter glance back at a former lover, who has seemingly escaped the flaming detritus of their break-up:
"So much has changed. And still, you are fortunate:
the ideal burns in you like a fever.
Or not like a fever, like a second heart." (#4)
Whooo! Being a fan of Greek myth myself, I couldn't held but be excited that she continually returns to the Persephone/Hades story. I never felt totally satisfied, however - when these myths are so fraught with history and expectation, I suppose it's quite difficult to overcome in a way which does not readily slip into cliche. I mean, she goes for the obvious, which is okay in the same way that I found the movie "Black Swan" to be a rather obvious, if not well-done, swipe at the cliches of ballet. Although it's "clever" or whatever to perform a feminist revision of those myths, I'm just a little bored to find that Gluck paints a Persephone as the listless girl-victim, the "piece of meat" between Hades and her mother.
But whatever. I'm tainted for having read Adrienne Rich's incredible 1971 essay, "When We Dead Awaken", just prior to opening up my Gluck. What resonated for me was Rich's point that yeah, duh, women poets have anger. Rightfully so. But it's not sufficiently interesting to wallow in it, poetically-speaking. 1971. Rich said this in 1971. So for me, Gluck's poetry came off as a half-hearted, polite sort of poetry interested more in its cool beauty than in actually doing anything. Like a dull fusion of naval-gazing and pseudo-feminist sentiments, as though she were trying to hitch herself onto a fashionable train. There are a few flashes of good lines, but altogether I'm confused as to what the big deal is about.
Even more boring than Gluck is Marianne Moore. And that's all I have to say.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Rilke, Rilke, Rilke.
Once upon a time, a girl gets into a doctoral program in literature. She aspires to be a medievalist, because medieval things are cool. But more importantly, because she'd get to spend years learning and writing and researching in the midst of brilliant, strange people.
However, forces in the universe conspire to remind her that she is a poet, and has always been so, and life is short. Doing things for the sake of their coolness begins to feel dubious.
She begins the program and announces her desire to study poetry. This is a compromise, and the gods can smell it. She manages to piss off the program - "betrayed!" - as well as herself - "now what?"
-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-
The "what" has a long, long way to go before it is settled - something like another 9 months of my contract.
But in the meantime, fuck it. I'll read Rilke, and I will write about Rilke, and The Academly can't fucking stop me.
Rilke's Duino Elegies stop me in my tracks. By god, am I glad I've learned German! I catch myself muttering "Ein jeder Engel ist shrechlick" under my breath; it floats so gorgeously, caught up in waves of tongue. Every language really should be all about tongue contortions, if you ask me.
Anyway, the Third Elegy (Die dritte Elegie) in particular has remained with me for the past few days:
Du nicht hast ihm, wehe, nicht seine Mutter / hat ihm die Bogen der Braun so zur Erwartung gespannt. / Nicht an dir, ihn fuhlendes Madchen, an dir nicht / bog seine Lippe sich zum fruchtbarern Ausdruck. / Meinst du wirklich, ihn hatte dein leichter Auftritt / also erschuttert, du, die wandelt die Fruhwind? (14-19)
The not-quite-amazing translation goes something like this...
No, it really wasn't you, nor was it his mother / who arched his brow with so much expectation. / Girl who's holding him now, not for yours, not for your lips did his thicken with passion . / You who wander like the morning breeze, do you really / thinking your gentle coming could convulse him so?
And then, oh my god:
Zwar du erschrakst ihm das Herz; doch altere Schrecken / sturzten in ihn bei dem beruhrenden Anstoss. (20-21)
True, you scared his heart; but more ancient terrors rushed into him with your shocking touch.
(Despite the miniature disasters of life, I can always read of "more ancient terrors" convulsing the heart. Quality consolation!)
What I find so fascinating in this Elegy is typical of my predeliction for pscyhoanaltical theory. I mean, c'mon - his mother and his lover are mentioned in the same line?! What a hideously beautiful paradox! And frankly, more true than most people care to admit (which is not to neglect the equally detrimental effects of an overpowering father, but I digress).
Who indeed has arched his brown with expectation? Expectation for what? Something about the women just mentioned - their proximity, their corporeal reality - leads me to assume he's craving feminine presence, love. But it can't be that simple. Expectation: the poet knows exactly what he wants, and the Desired She is an ideal - a construct of his mind, that neither mother nor lover could ever, or can ever, supply the infinite, selfless, complete love we desperately imagine ourselves as entitled to. They can approximate the Anima Soulmate, of course (particularly on a cold night, har har), but he's beyond fulfillment. He's too hyper-aware of Woman's perpetual/impending disappointment.
My heart breaks for the "Girl". Not even a woman; at least not in his eyes - comfortably infantilized and metaphysically distanced; should we believe the poet's external references to the "he," the "him"? At the risk of imposing, I daresay the poet resorts to emotional detachment, using this third-person perspective to distance himself further from his his misery. Perhaps this sadness is, as usual, linked to the apparently uncontrollable passion which once "thickened his lips", as though the physical acted before the spiritual kicked in - as though a lover's contract has taken place, as it inevitably will do, amidst all the embraces and kisses. The poet has entered into a contract that his spirit, upon reflection, cannot fulfill.
He tries to recognize her and extend some courtesy, some kindness: "You who wander like the morning breeze..." But even this attempt to reach out collapses into a bitter self-critique: "do you really / think your gentle coming could convulse him so?" The poet views himself as the center, the Girl as mere periphery. Worse yet, his center is a vortex, devoid of joy, love, hope - he wallows in his unattainability.
And then the killer line: "more ancient terrors rushed into him with your shocking touch." However, 'shocking' is a poor translation here; I started trying to sort out my own version, but then remembered that I am a)not paid to do so and b)no one is reading this so I might as well do it later.
Anyway. Ancient terrors. I mean, obviously he goes on from here, and I could really go on, but I shan't. See the reasons stated above.
I dig the whole metaphysical, mystical, existential vibe. I love that it's an elegy, and therefore evocative of a great heritage, ancestry, marble columns, etc. I love that despite all of that, it's scorchingly human and simple - love between two human beings, and yet that very act is not so simple at all. It is fraught with power, difference, distance, and ego.
Fabulously depressing. You see? Rilke is keepin' it real. I appreciate that, now, particularly.
However, forces in the universe conspire to remind her that she is a poet, and has always been so, and life is short. Doing things for the sake of their coolness begins to feel dubious.
She begins the program and announces her desire to study poetry. This is a compromise, and the gods can smell it. She manages to piss off the program - "betrayed!" - as well as herself - "now what?"
-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-
The "what" has a long, long way to go before it is settled - something like another 9 months of my contract.
But in the meantime, fuck it. I'll read Rilke, and I will write about Rilke, and The Academly can't fucking stop me.
Rilke's Duino Elegies stop me in my tracks. By god, am I glad I've learned German! I catch myself muttering "Ein jeder Engel ist shrechlick" under my breath; it floats so gorgeously, caught up in waves of tongue. Every language really should be all about tongue contortions, if you ask me.
Anyway, the Third Elegy (Die dritte Elegie) in particular has remained with me for the past few days:
Du nicht hast ihm, wehe, nicht seine Mutter / hat ihm die Bogen der Braun so zur Erwartung gespannt. / Nicht an dir, ihn fuhlendes Madchen, an dir nicht / bog seine Lippe sich zum fruchtbarern Ausdruck. / Meinst du wirklich, ihn hatte dein leichter Auftritt / also erschuttert, du, die wandelt die Fruhwind? (14-19)
The not-quite-amazing translation goes something like this...
No, it really wasn't you, nor was it his mother / who arched his brow with so much expectation. / Girl who's holding him now, not for yours, not for your lips did his thicken with passion . / You who wander like the morning breeze, do you really / thinking your gentle coming could convulse him so?
And then, oh my god:
Zwar du erschrakst ihm das Herz; doch altere Schrecken / sturzten in ihn bei dem beruhrenden Anstoss. (20-21)
True, you scared his heart; but more ancient terrors rushed into him with your shocking touch.
(Despite the miniature disasters of life, I can always read of "more ancient terrors" convulsing the heart. Quality consolation!)
What I find so fascinating in this Elegy is typical of my predeliction for pscyhoanaltical theory. I mean, c'mon - his mother and his lover are mentioned in the same line?! What a hideously beautiful paradox! And frankly, more true than most people care to admit (which is not to neglect the equally detrimental effects of an overpowering father, but I digress).
Who indeed has arched his brown with expectation? Expectation for what? Something about the women just mentioned - their proximity, their corporeal reality - leads me to assume he's craving feminine presence, love. But it can't be that simple. Expectation: the poet knows exactly what he wants, and the Desired She is an ideal - a construct of his mind, that neither mother nor lover could ever, or can ever, supply the infinite, selfless, complete love we desperately imagine ourselves as entitled to. They can approximate the Anima Soulmate, of course (particularly on a cold night, har har), but he's beyond fulfillment. He's too hyper-aware of Woman's perpetual/impending disappointment.
My heart breaks for the "Girl". Not even a woman; at least not in his eyes - comfortably infantilized and metaphysically distanced; should we believe the poet's external references to the "he," the "him"? At the risk of imposing, I daresay the poet resorts to emotional detachment, using this third-person perspective to distance himself further from his his misery. Perhaps this sadness is, as usual, linked to the apparently uncontrollable passion which once "thickened his lips", as though the physical acted before the spiritual kicked in - as though a lover's contract has taken place, as it inevitably will do, amidst all the embraces and kisses. The poet has entered into a contract that his spirit, upon reflection, cannot fulfill.
He tries to recognize her and extend some courtesy, some kindness: "You who wander like the morning breeze..." But even this attempt to reach out collapses into a bitter self-critique: "do you really / think your gentle coming could convulse him so?" The poet views himself as the center, the Girl as mere periphery. Worse yet, his center is a vortex, devoid of joy, love, hope - he wallows in his unattainability.
And then the killer line: "more ancient terrors rushed into him with your shocking touch." However, 'shocking' is a poor translation here; I started trying to sort out my own version, but then remembered that I am a)not paid to do so and b)no one is reading this so I might as well do it later.
Anyway. Ancient terrors. I mean, obviously he goes on from here, and I could really go on, but I shan't. See the reasons stated above.
I dig the whole metaphysical, mystical, existential vibe. I love that it's an elegy, and therefore evocative of a great heritage, ancestry, marble columns, etc. I love that despite all of that, it's scorchingly human and simple - love between two human beings, and yet that very act is not so simple at all. It is fraught with power, difference, distance, and ego.
Fabulously depressing. You see? Rilke is keepin' it real. I appreciate that, now, particularly.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Edwin Arlington Robinson
"Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever born,
and he had reasons."
Oh, Edwin Arlington Robinson! You occupy a little bit of real estate in my heart, just for having written this poem and the following stanzas:
"Miniver cursed the commonplace
And eyed a khaki suit with loathing;
He missed the medieval grace
of iron clothing..."
My modest complaint would be the uneven rhythm. Is this done on purpose? Is this a particular forumula? At least he's consistent... No matter. This is killer:
"Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
Miniver coughed, and called it fate,
And kept on drinking."
Frankly, Miniver seems like a bit of a geek and definitley a loser, lost in fantasies of chivalric glamour to the point of disdaining the life he's got. Compounding the situation with alcohol in a beautiful, sick way. This poem catches my eye because, well, I feel like I know this guy. And if you take out the medieval stuff - I believe I dated this guy, dammit.
Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever born,
and he had reasons."
Oh, Edwin Arlington Robinson! You occupy a little bit of real estate in my heart, just for having written this poem and the following stanzas:
"Miniver cursed the commonplace
And eyed a khaki suit with loathing;
He missed the medieval grace
of iron clothing..."
My modest complaint would be the uneven rhythm. Is this done on purpose? Is this a particular forumula? At least he's consistent... No matter. This is killer:
"Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
Miniver coughed, and called it fate,
And kept on drinking."
Frankly, Miniver seems like a bit of a geek and definitley a loser, lost in fantasies of chivalric glamour to the point of disdaining the life he's got. Compounding the situation with alcohol in a beautiful, sick way. This poem catches my eye because, well, I feel like I know this guy. And if you take out the medieval stuff - I believe I dated this guy, dammit.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Plato: Ion
Okay, not poetry. But Plato had such bitchy opinions about poets, that I thought I might as well spend a few minutes resuming his short dialogue about them.
In this particular piece, Socrates encounters the rhapsode (a professional reciter of poetry) named Ion. Ion boasts about his recitation skills, as well as his ability to interepret and explain Homer - Homer, Homer, Homer, and only Homer. This lack of expertise in anyone but Homer pricks Socrates' ears; what exactly has Ion mastered that enables him to speak about that poet - can't this mysterious body of knowledge extend to anyone else? Doesn't he seem like, oh... a phony and a jerk for thinking his poetry makes him so damned special?
In the end, Socrates argues the poet into accepting that Ion's knowledge is not his own:
"That's not a subject you've mastered... it's a divine power that moves you, as a "Magnetic" stone moves iron rings," he informs Ion (para. 534). Even Homer himself was one of these magnets, with a god or muse on one side - transmitting / inspiring / dictating poetry -- and the audience on the other - receiving / clapping / blithely praising the poet's skill. The poet is merely playing telephone.
Oh, and even more amusing: the gods take away a poet's intellect, "so that we who hear should know that they are not the ones who speak those verses that are of such high value... the god himself is the one who speaks, and he gives voice through them to us" (para. 534). This would explain why even a crappy poet can, on occasion, squeak out something lovely - they happened upon some good divine favor that day.
Obviously, being blessed with a divine gift for poetry is a rather backhanded compliment. Ion's ability to speak only about Homer is evidential of his "gift," and explains why he is evidently incapable of mastering any other subject. I presume that Socrates means that he could master multiple subjects, were he truly able to on his own. The dialogue concludes with a bizarre sequence in which the philosopher begins to read like a smug little bitch, trapping a hapless and deflated poet into a verbal corner of what he is and isn't. And Ion cheerfully accepts the wisdom of Platonic thought.
Sheesh!
All I can say is that it certainly makes me appreciate my humanistic disposition. I'd be terribly annoyed if God got credit for my GPA.
In this particular piece, Socrates encounters the rhapsode (a professional reciter of poetry) named Ion. Ion boasts about his recitation skills, as well as his ability to interepret and explain Homer - Homer, Homer, Homer, and only Homer. This lack of expertise in anyone but Homer pricks Socrates' ears; what exactly has Ion mastered that enables him to speak about that poet - can't this mysterious body of knowledge extend to anyone else? Doesn't he seem like, oh... a phony and a jerk for thinking his poetry makes him so damned special?
In the end, Socrates argues the poet into accepting that Ion's knowledge is not his own:
"That's not a subject you've mastered... it's a divine power that moves you, as a "Magnetic" stone moves iron rings," he informs Ion (para. 534). Even Homer himself was one of these magnets, with a god or muse on one side - transmitting / inspiring / dictating poetry -- and the audience on the other - receiving / clapping / blithely praising the poet's skill. The poet is merely playing telephone.
Oh, and even more amusing: the gods take away a poet's intellect, "so that we who hear should know that they are not the ones who speak those verses that are of such high value... the god himself is the one who speaks, and he gives voice through them to us" (para. 534). This would explain why even a crappy poet can, on occasion, squeak out something lovely - they happened upon some good divine favor that day.
Obviously, being blessed with a divine gift for poetry is a rather backhanded compliment. Ion's ability to speak only about Homer is evidential of his "gift," and explains why he is evidently incapable of mastering any other subject. I presume that Socrates means that he could master multiple subjects, were he truly able to on his own. The dialogue concludes with a bizarre sequence in which the philosopher begins to read like a smug little bitch, trapping a hapless and deflated poet into a verbal corner of what he is and isn't. And Ion cheerfully accepts the wisdom of Platonic thought.
Sheesh!
All I can say is that it certainly makes me appreciate my humanistic disposition. I'd be terribly annoyed if God got credit for my GPA.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Louise Labe
The work of Louise Labe is good to read in times of heartbreak, to which I am hardly a stranger. Yet I didn't re-discover this fact until somewhat recently, and completely by accident.
Louise Labe brings first to mind my undergraduate education, and then pre-Renaissance France. I recall reading a few of her poems as a bit of token "female French historical" works thrown my way during a survey course, and I felt quite underwhelmed by them. This would be the classic LL:
VIII
Je vis, je meurs: je me brule et me noye.
J'ay chaut estreme en endurant froidure;
la vie m'est et trop molle et trop dure;
j'ay grans ennuis entremeslez de joye.
Look, undergrad, observe the amazing contrast! Her use of obvious, binary pairs to express sorrow at love lost! I have in mind not so much a professor as an over-excited zookeeper, showing off a dried out specimen. This being the only poem I was given quickly extinguished any interest I may have had in her work. That's why presentation matters, people!
I gave her another shot a few months ago, and to my surprise, she made me cry. Not Louise herself, of course. Maybe I was having a bad day which rendered me overly receptive to her work, but -- the real point is that her words were powerful, were solace, and were really beautiful. I felt for a moment comforted by the fact that someone else had not only felt just as I felt then, but had done so more than 500 years ago - and hell, she not only survived, but made something beautiful out of all that pain.
Maybe she's premodern Chick Lit, but I'm okay with that.
As a female writer, I feel I perpetually wrestle with a "need to prove myself as a serious writer." Things core to my existence, to my worldview, tend to locate themselves in emotion, passion, ambiguity, flux. Those aren't feminine characteristics, of course, but I locate these universal themes in personal experiences - I can't just "get away from myself" and write about politics, like Yeats, or trees, like Wordsworth. There's something unmistakeably feminine in my voice and my subjects, and somewhere along the cultural line I feel it's often derided as whining, as stereotypical, as banal. I know I've heard one too many wisecracks in the press about "teenage girl angst poetry;" my ears prick up anytime I hear it on the telly (leading me to watch very little telly). But really - what's wrong with teenage girls writing poetry? Teenage girls grow up to be adult women, after all (well, many of us). I wonder why American media is driven to ridicule those who only want to articulate primal emotions and definitive life experiences - how the hell else do we contemplate and channel the meaning within our lives? It - I mean any sort of artistic expression, really - strikes me as a normal, healthy, human impulse, which is strangely and unfortunately sequestered off from the mainstream. I wonder what the teenage boys hear, absorb, and live out - it can't be much better. In fact, the silence could be worse.
The artifice adopted by so many medieval/Renaissance "greats" is so tiresome. But so is a stupid modern media rhetoric that teaches boys to be bread-winning robots and girls to be rhinestone soccer moms. My point: I do not believe that heartbreak is a trivial or self-indulgent topic, although it can be handled with varying degrees of success. I love Louise Labe for being one of the first - and very few - women who wrote about it with absolutely no qualms. Every poem bursts with love and sorrow. There is no compromise, and no idealization of her lover - who is in fact less of interest, seemingly, then her emotions about the lover's desertion.
VII (English translation)
All that draws breath must die; the soul, astray,
flies from teh body, quite the human state:
the body, I; you, its most perfect mate.
Where are you, soul beloved? Tell me, pray.
Leave me not long a-swoon, for well you may,
coming to succor me, arrive too late.
Let not this body - yours - suffer that fate,
but give it back its better half straightaway.
Yet, Friend, let danger not accompany
that sweet reunion; let love, rather, be
its boon companion, neither pitiless
nor harsh; but gracious, and of gentle air,
to grant me once again your loveliness,
and all its erstwhile cruelty forswear.
Oh maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan. Even just typing that out broke my heart - my favorite bit being in the first stanza, "the body, I; you" -- even the words are straining to be closer, to couple with the ever elusive "you," but that damn semi-colon separates them (not present in the French version, though). Longing for that which is long gone - the poet ends by trying to cut a deal, by offering unconditional forgiveness -but we know it's too late. The poem ends so hopefully, and yet is completely doomed.
Or, just a nice piece from # V:
The human spirit, bowed beneath its woes,
eagerly years for sleep and sweet repose.
Ill do I bear the Sun's clear-shining light.
A bit of seasonal depression, eh, Louise?
I'm all thought out now. I'll fix this later.
Louise Labe brings first to mind my undergraduate education, and then pre-Renaissance France. I recall reading a few of her poems as a bit of token "female French historical" works thrown my way during a survey course, and I felt quite underwhelmed by them. This would be the classic LL:
VIII
Je vis, je meurs: je me brule et me noye.
J'ay chaut estreme en endurant froidure;
la vie m'est et trop molle et trop dure;
j'ay grans ennuis entremeslez de joye.
Look, undergrad, observe the amazing contrast! Her use of obvious, binary pairs to express sorrow at love lost! I have in mind not so much a professor as an over-excited zookeeper, showing off a dried out specimen. This being the only poem I was given quickly extinguished any interest I may have had in her work. That's why presentation matters, people!
I gave her another shot a few months ago, and to my surprise, she made me cry. Not Louise herself, of course. Maybe I was having a bad day which rendered me overly receptive to her work, but -- the real point is that her words were powerful, were solace, and were really beautiful. I felt for a moment comforted by the fact that someone else had not only felt just as I felt then, but had done so more than 500 years ago - and hell, she not only survived, but made something beautiful out of all that pain.
Maybe she's premodern Chick Lit, but I'm okay with that.
As a female writer, I feel I perpetually wrestle with a "need to prove myself as a serious writer." Things core to my existence, to my worldview, tend to locate themselves in emotion, passion, ambiguity, flux. Those aren't feminine characteristics, of course, but I locate these universal themes in personal experiences - I can't just "get away from myself" and write about politics, like Yeats, or trees, like Wordsworth. There's something unmistakeably feminine in my voice and my subjects, and somewhere along the cultural line I feel it's often derided as whining, as stereotypical, as banal. I know I've heard one too many wisecracks in the press about "teenage girl angst poetry;" my ears prick up anytime I hear it on the telly (leading me to watch very little telly). But really - what's wrong with teenage girls writing poetry? Teenage girls grow up to be adult women, after all (well, many of us). I wonder why American media is driven to ridicule those who only want to articulate primal emotions and definitive life experiences - how the hell else do we contemplate and channel the meaning within our lives? It - I mean any sort of artistic expression, really - strikes me as a normal, healthy, human impulse, which is strangely and unfortunately sequestered off from the mainstream. I wonder what the teenage boys hear, absorb, and live out - it can't be much better. In fact, the silence could be worse.
The artifice adopted by so many medieval/Renaissance "greats" is so tiresome. But so is a stupid modern media rhetoric that teaches boys to be bread-winning robots and girls to be rhinestone soccer moms. My point: I do not believe that heartbreak is a trivial or self-indulgent topic, although it can be handled with varying degrees of success. I love Louise Labe for being one of the first - and very few - women who wrote about it with absolutely no qualms. Every poem bursts with love and sorrow. There is no compromise, and no idealization of her lover - who is in fact less of interest, seemingly, then her emotions about the lover's desertion.
VII (English translation)
All that draws breath must die; the soul, astray,
flies from teh body, quite the human state:
the body, I; you, its most perfect mate.
Where are you, soul beloved? Tell me, pray.
Leave me not long a-swoon, for well you may,
coming to succor me, arrive too late.
Let not this body - yours - suffer that fate,
but give it back its better half straightaway.
Yet, Friend, let danger not accompany
that sweet reunion; let love, rather, be
its boon companion, neither pitiless
nor harsh; but gracious, and of gentle air,
to grant me once again your loveliness,
and all its erstwhile cruelty forswear.
Oh maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan. Even just typing that out broke my heart - my favorite bit being in the first stanza, "the body, I; you" -- even the words are straining to be closer, to couple with the ever elusive "you," but that damn semi-colon separates them (not present in the French version, though). Longing for that which is long gone - the poet ends by trying to cut a deal, by offering unconditional forgiveness -but we know it's too late. The poem ends so hopefully, and yet is completely doomed.
Or, just a nice piece from # V:
The human spirit, bowed beneath its woes,
eagerly years for sleep and sweet repose.
Ill do I bear the Sun's clear-shining light.
A bit of seasonal depression, eh, Louise?
I'm all thought out now. I'll fix this later.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Walt Whitman
Joy is a perverse topic. And I don't trust anyone who appears unfailingly cheerful.
It may appear overly grim and off-puttingly pessimistic, but it's also a fact that life can, indeed, be a bitch. Its bitchiness is often ironically exacerbated by those who insist on pretending that all is well, that we are all entitled to unicorns and rainbows, that world peace is an achievable social norm.
I mean, has Disney done us any favors? By filling everyone's head with a notion of The Ideal, the Magical Other, the Whatever that's Better than Whatever You've Got, people tend to grow depressed about what they'll likely never get, and start to neglect, devalue, or overly criticize what they've actually got.
Which is why Whitman, a joyous poet, restores a little of my hope in life, and people, and what they're capable of. It's cliche to say, but his words - his style - roars off the page. Relentless. Descriptive, like his mouth and brain were desperately trying to keep up with the hand that wrote the verse. Somewhere between the mind's chaos and the poem's control, that tension remains, and thus his poetry is vivid, alive, and breathing.
Yet he's never a schmuck. He's bursting with life, and joy, and love for others - but it's rooted in love for himself, and a very naked, raw love at that. Whitman embraces his body and its every ugly function. He adores the trash on the sidewalks, the dying soldier, the "mossy scabs of the worm fence" (Song of Myself, 5). Whitman feels almost Buddhist in his embrace of the present, which in turn reflects the universal, and his unconditional acceptance of what simply is.
I hope I meet people like Whitman in my own life.
I love his personal story, too. He moved back in with his parents in his 30's, supported himself part-time with carpentry, and published only "Leaves of Grass." Granted, he re-printed it several times as it gained fame and acclaim; even Oscar Wilde visited him. But in the beginning, he was kind of a loser, and for a day job he acted as a government clerk.
Individual poem notes:
"Song of Myself" feels like a simultaneous river of joy and melancholy - a perfect balance of what life is, in other words:
"I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end / But I do not talk of the beginning or the end. / There was never any more inception than there is now, Nor any more youth or age than there is now,/ And will never be any more perfection than there is now,/ Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now." (verse 3)
Too perfect to comment on.
The entirety of Verse 5 is a love-song which I too love. I think it's the most romantic, sensual, accurate vision of what true love means, is; yet it begins with such ambiguity:
"I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you,
And you must not be abased to the other."
I've been toying with this line. I love that the poet addresses his soul, his-self, and differentiates it from "the other I am." By affirming his love of his own soul, we see that there is a gap between its internal privacy and purity, and that peculiar, risky, external "other." I consider that other to be the mask we must all wear in order to survive in society, even amidst would-be lovers. Even if you don't subscribe to my new-age-esque articulation, I think it's safe to say that everyone has the sense, at one time or another, that we are misunderstood - that who we are or how we present ourself is only the tip of the iceberg. Humans are unfathomably complex creatures, after all, and it's so easy for Others to stereotype us, define us, and judge us simply by this external presentation. We ourselves must try, as much as we can, to prevent our external "other" from "abasing" itself by behaving honorably and lovingly. Likewise, I believe Whitman's second reference to "the other" refers to literally - the other lover, our 'soul-mate' if you will - someone who also strives to behave honorably and lovingly; an act of reverance primarily for the self, which will naturally benefit our ability to truly bond with The Other.
Whitman taps into the social and individual psychology which Freud would later articulate in biological terms. This search to describe and define the interior is beautifully in step with Romantic/Modernist movements of the 19th and 20th centuries; I wonder if Whitman read any Schopenhauer. I imagine he would have quite liked his idea of the "universal will" of the world (I myself quite fancy his essay).
I will also briefly point out that verse 46 is fucking incredible. It again is unconditional in its love for the other, yet this isn't a mystical love. Nor does the poet demand perfection from his beloved:
"You are also asking me question and I hear you, / I answer that I cannot answer, you must find out for yourself."
In this sequence, the poet "tramps a perpetual journey," that of life - "no chair, no church, no philosophy" but for his love of men and wmen, and the open horizon before him. The Other he encounters and loves has questions, is unsure about his path, and the poet offers to temporarily take on his burden for "in due time you shall repay the same service to me." I find the non-chalant confidence he has that The Other will be strong enough, one day, to forge his own path, to be incredibly moving. He hooks his arm around the companion to provide support and compassion, not to satisfy lust, yet we are quietly reminded of love's physical element. Platonic love, kin love, passionate love, are all bound up as the poet admonishes the timid beloved that "long enough have you dream'd contemptible dreams... You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life."
Hell yeah!
Walt Whitman, I love you, too. Thank you for keepin' it real.
It may appear overly grim and off-puttingly pessimistic, but it's also a fact that life can, indeed, be a bitch. Its bitchiness is often ironically exacerbated by those who insist on pretending that all is well, that we are all entitled to unicorns and rainbows, that world peace is an achievable social norm.
I mean, has Disney done us any favors? By filling everyone's head with a notion of The Ideal, the Magical Other, the Whatever that's Better than Whatever You've Got, people tend to grow depressed about what they'll likely never get, and start to neglect, devalue, or overly criticize what they've actually got.
Which is why Whitman, a joyous poet, restores a little of my hope in life, and people, and what they're capable of. It's cliche to say, but his words - his style - roars off the page. Relentless. Descriptive, like his mouth and brain were desperately trying to keep up with the hand that wrote the verse. Somewhere between the mind's chaos and the poem's control, that tension remains, and thus his poetry is vivid, alive, and breathing.
Yet he's never a schmuck. He's bursting with life, and joy, and love for others - but it's rooted in love for himself, and a very naked, raw love at that. Whitman embraces his body and its every ugly function. He adores the trash on the sidewalks, the dying soldier, the "mossy scabs of the worm fence" (Song of Myself, 5). Whitman feels almost Buddhist in his embrace of the present, which in turn reflects the universal, and his unconditional acceptance of what simply is.
I hope I meet people like Whitman in my own life.
I love his personal story, too. He moved back in with his parents in his 30's, supported himself part-time with carpentry, and published only "Leaves of Grass." Granted, he re-printed it several times as it gained fame and acclaim; even Oscar Wilde visited him. But in the beginning, he was kind of a loser, and for a day job he acted as a government clerk.
Individual poem notes:
"Song of Myself" feels like a simultaneous river of joy and melancholy - a perfect balance of what life is, in other words:
"I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end / But I do not talk of the beginning or the end. / There was never any more inception than there is now, Nor any more youth or age than there is now,/ And will never be any more perfection than there is now,/ Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now." (verse 3)
Too perfect to comment on.
The entirety of Verse 5 is a love-song which I too love. I think it's the most romantic, sensual, accurate vision of what true love means, is; yet it begins with such ambiguity:
"I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you,
And you must not be abased to the other."
I've been toying with this line. I love that the poet addresses his soul, his-self, and differentiates it from "the other I am." By affirming his love of his own soul, we see that there is a gap between its internal privacy and purity, and that peculiar, risky, external "other." I consider that other to be the mask we must all wear in order to survive in society, even amidst would-be lovers. Even if you don't subscribe to my new-age-esque articulation, I think it's safe to say that everyone has the sense, at one time or another, that we are misunderstood - that who we are or how we present ourself is only the tip of the iceberg. Humans are unfathomably complex creatures, after all, and it's so easy for Others to stereotype us, define us, and judge us simply by this external presentation. We ourselves must try, as much as we can, to prevent our external "other" from "abasing" itself by behaving honorably and lovingly. Likewise, I believe Whitman's second reference to "the other" refers to literally - the other lover, our 'soul-mate' if you will - someone who also strives to behave honorably and lovingly; an act of reverance primarily for the self, which will naturally benefit our ability to truly bond with The Other.
Whitman taps into the social and individual psychology which Freud would later articulate in biological terms. This search to describe and define the interior is beautifully in step with Romantic/Modernist movements of the 19th and 20th centuries; I wonder if Whitman read any Schopenhauer. I imagine he would have quite liked his idea of the "universal will" of the world (I myself quite fancy his essay).
I will also briefly point out that verse 46 is fucking incredible. It again is unconditional in its love for the other, yet this isn't a mystical love. Nor does the poet demand perfection from his beloved:
"You are also asking me question and I hear you, / I answer that I cannot answer, you must find out for yourself."
In this sequence, the poet "tramps a perpetual journey," that of life - "no chair, no church, no philosophy" but for his love of men and wmen, and the open horizon before him. The Other he encounters and loves has questions, is unsure about his path, and the poet offers to temporarily take on his burden for "in due time you shall repay the same service to me." I find the non-chalant confidence he has that The Other will be strong enough, one day, to forge his own path, to be incredibly moving. He hooks his arm around the companion to provide support and compassion, not to satisfy lust, yet we are quietly reminded of love's physical element. Platonic love, kin love, passionate love, are all bound up as the poet admonishes the timid beloved that "long enough have you dream'd contemptible dreams... You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life."
Hell yeah!
Walt Whitman, I love you, too. Thank you for keepin' it real.
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