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A Diary
About Me
- Jay
- I'm an undergrad working on a double major in sociology and English literature. I write short fiction, poetry and the occasional freelance article.
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2006
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February
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- A fine balance.
- Notes towards a sociology of literature.
- Thank you, Widgets.
- I will wage war on gravity.
- An introduction to political philosophy.
- Take your grievances to the appropriate department...
- News!
- This is for the comic book people.
- Pay attention.
- Making goals.
- I may have misused the word "encroaches," but Read...
- I'm a sucker.
- More poetry / prose games.
- A while back someone posted some poetry links in t...
- What was your first favourite poem? Why?
- Seth Fisher, RIP.
- The lesson.
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February
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10 comments:
Hmm. The first book that I loved and memorized as a toddler was a long poem called "The Caboose Who Got Loose" (and I still recommend it), but I'm not going to try to explain the motivations of the toddler mind.
Once I understood what a poem was, it would have to have been Milne's "Disobedience," both for the refrain and the idea of someone disappearing into another world as they tried to go down to the end of the town. And the righteous anger of the toddler.
But the first poem that I decided to memorize myself, and, oddly enough, have never, EVER forgotten, and still find myself saying under my breath as I walk along, is Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky. It had everything I wanted, really, from a poem: a pastoral setting, a battle, words that worked, and an aria da capo ending.
I joke that the jabberwocky is always following me around like an overgrown pet, because I so often chant the thing as a walking song -- but this morning, it just strikes me as one more indicator for why I study Blake.
Oh, I agree: the Jabberwocky has a hypnotic quality, doesn't it? The mix of a "singable" metre and twisting diction is really invigorating.
I liked Milne's "Dirge Without Music." So, so bitter.
For me, the first poem I memorized was Poe's "The Raven." His metre was relatively easy to grasp, but the fact Poe maintains the tension throughout the poem then unleashes at just the right point- well, my ninth grade self was pleased. Plus, the tone perfectly suited me.
But my absolute favourite first was Pablo Neruda's "Walking Around." My high school art teacher introduced to it because I was writing "automatic poetry" - I was picking random words out of a hat and piecing them together into a poem - so my poems must have resembled Neruda's own work somehow. Anyway, the poem paces itself as though the reader is actually walking with Neruda, something I did a lot of when I was younger. Only by myself, not with Pablo. But the imagery, that was what struck me the hardest. I never read a poem that described "bones sticking out of windows" or whatnot. The poem introduced me to the possibilities inherent to the medium.
It's great hearing from you Jane!
I can't really remember poetry being much on my radar screen before grade 6. Fiction and plays, yes, but poetry no. Well, except that I decided one day that Robert Frost was my favourite which may have had more to do with the fact that he was the only poet I knew. But grade 6 was the year of learning poems by heart. I tried out for the school play with Victor Hugo's "Apres la Bataille", which shocked and delighted the teacher running the audition, since my competition was a girl doing the hula in a grass skirt made of a shredded plastic bag and various other hastily prepared skits.
Here it is:
Mon père, ce héros au sourire si doux,
Suivi d'un seul housard qu'il aimait entre tous
Pour sa grande bravoure et pour sa haute taille,
Parcourait à cheval, le soir d'une bataille,
Le champ couvert de morts sur qui tombait la nuit.
Il lui sembla dans l'ombre entendre un faible bruit.
C'était un Espagnol de l'armée en déroute
Qui se traînait sanglant sur le bord de la route,
Râlant, brisé, livide, et mort plus qu'à moitié,
Et qui disait : - A boire, à boire par pitié ! -
Mon père, ému, tendit à son housard fidèle
Une gourde de rhum qui pendait à sa selle,
Et dit : - Tiens, donne à boire à ce pauvre blessé.
Tout à coup, au moment où le housard baissé
Se penchait vers lui, l'homme, une espèce de maure,
Saisit un pistolet qu'il étreignait encore,
Et vise au front mon père en criant : Caramba !
Le coup passa si près que le chapeau tomba
Et que le cheval fit un écart en arrière.
- Donne-lui tout de même à boire, dit mon père.
For the english readers:
MY father, hero of benignant mien,
On horseback visited the gory scene,
After the battle as the evening fell,
And took with him a trooper loved right well,
Because of bravery and presence bold.
The field was covered with the dead, all cold,
And shades of night were deepening : came a sound,
Feeble and hoarse, from something on the ground ;
It was a Spaniard of the vanquished force,
Who dragged himself with pain beside their course.
Wounded and bleeding, livid and half dead,
"Give me to drink -- in pity, drink!" he said.
My father, touched, stretched to his follower now
A flask of rum that from his saddle-bow
Hung down : "The poor soul -- give him drink," said he
But while the trooper prompt, obediently
Stooped towards the other, he of Moorish race
Pointed a pistol at my father's face,
And with a savage oath the trigger drew :
The hat flew off, a bullet passing through.
As swerved his charger in a backward stride,
"Give him to drink the same," my father cried.
I have to say, I didn't know what "maure" meant until I tried to find the poem's translation today. I really liked the part where I got to yell "Caramba" and startle all the onlookers.
That same year we had to memorize a poem for english class, so I picked The Wild Swans at Coole by WB Yeats.
THE trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty Swans.
The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.
I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.
Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.
But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?
I think memorizing and performing those poems make up some of my best memories of literature.
What I love about Frost is his ability to straddle the line between contemporary and classical poetry. His poems are very tightly constructed, but his diction and focus have a twentieth century, um, "texture." You know, I'm not overly familiar with Yeats. Partly because I always confuse him with Keats.
Memorizing a poem, especially when you're young, has two significant consequences. Not only do you feel accomplished by being able to recite a long poem by heart, but by uttering a poem out loud you can feel the contours of the individual words and the lines themselves. I've always contested that poems have two lives: within the reader's head and in space, possessing the same ephemeral qualities as "regular speech."
Thank you for sharing your experiences GSH.
Dirge Without Music is gorgeous, J! and I almost mentioned The Raven, because I wanted to memorize it, and somehow, I never did. For years, it was one of my favorites.
It is nice to be running around the blogosphere again. I have not been about, lately; too much happening, my mind in too hectic a whirl. But thank you for being so kind despite the fact that I am often a terrible commenter.
i'm gonna get in on this, since my poem choices seem pretty mundane and very un-literary.
i grew up LOVING robert louis stevenson and saved him for rainy days, and would make up songs to it. then once i aged to the grandiose mature age of around 6, i started to dig shel silverstein's poetry, all of it, especially the poem about sticking your finger up your nose and having it bit off by the creature who lives in your schnoz. (hence, my fondness for picking my nose??)
oh my god - and how could i forget - ok, complete with the robert louis stevenson, we have the ultimate - dennis lee. listened to that on vinyl and read along voraciously - alligator pie, alligator pie, if i don't get some i think i'm going to die. nanook of the north..... aaaaaaaaah
my poetry memorization consisted of shel silverstein and robert frost. i was a complete frost junkie since i had an illustrated version which i loved. and then there is this killer anthology which i loved "til all the stars have fallen" which was an anthology of a whole bunch of canadian poems - fave one there is about yawns and how contagious they are.
now that i've unleashed the poetry rant, i should put it back in pandora's poetry box and get back to work. feel free to call for more comments. i could go OFFFFFF.
Lots of Robert Frost! Jess, if poetry can lead you away from your office, then let it do so.
I adore Stevenson, although I haven't pursued his work in a long time. I love Victorian literature that explores science, madness and adventure. So good. And, I'll add another comment on Frost: his poems are so carefully crafted, that some readers mistaken the piece for free verse.
I got your Jane Austen book via Lisa, but I won't be able to start it until next week.
Jane, you are a terribly busy human being, not a terrible commenter. :)
Oh, yeah, Alligator Pie! That really brings me back. I'm not familiar with Silverstein, though.
NOT familiar with Silverstein!!!!!!!
Sweet jesus - i think you know what the next book delivery will be...
oooh, it's soooo good.
I'm looking forward to it.
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