A Sweet Unrest

Weather With You

My plan for this week was to study Hyperion and post my thoughts about it. But then I got side tracked by Keats's letters to Fanny Brawne and The Eve of St. Agnes. Um, wow.

Along with everything else it is, The Eve of St. Agnes is very atmospheric. My favorite book ever is Wuthering Heights, which I first read at 16 and which I reread every few years to make sure it's still my favorite (it is). I love so much about that story, but one of the things I love most is how the crazy, out-of-control emotions are mirrored by the crazy, out-of-control weather. It's unusual for me to like a book where none of the characters themselves are very likable. I want to root for the good guy. But in Wuthering Heights I find myself despising the selfishness of Cathy and Heathcliff, yet still wanting them to somehow get what they want. It's brilliant.

I guess The Eve of St. Agnes, in part at least, affects me the same way. Neither of the characters is particularly likable; Madeline is naive and chooses dreams over reality and Porphyro's plot is, shall we say, not honorable. And yet, I wanted everything to work out for them. Keats's use of language is so powerful in this poem, and his descriptions of the cold, the revelry in the palace, and the 'elfin storm' at the end are so masterful- you feel it and see it.

I'll leave you with the opening of the poem, the description of the cold. But if you haven't done so, you have to read the whole thing. Promise me. And let me know what you think.

St. Agnes' Eve- Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in wooly fold:
Numb were the Beadsman's fingers while he told
His rosary, and while his frosted breath,
Like pious incense from a censor old,
Seem'd taking flight for heaven....

Beautiful Music

After my post about Roddy Frame, a reader (I have one!) asked me about his music. I thought I'd post a few free & legal links:

You can download two amazing songs here (very bottom of the page).

There are a few songs streaming at his official MySpace page.

My favorite YouTube clips (though it's hard to choose!) are here, here, and- going way back- here.

His online shop is here. This man has never made a bad record but either of the two live cds are probably an especially good starting place if you want to check him out.

Poetic Rhythm

Blogs are supposed to be overly intimate and confessional, right? I have a confession to make. It's an embarrassing though probably not particularly interesting confession. But here it goes. Since starting this whole poetry project I have been struggling to understand precisely what poetic meter refers to. I mean, what exactly is meter? That is my question. Yes, Edward Hirsch went over it in the glossary of his excellent book, and I read that definition (and all the definitions for the related terms like iambic pentameter and, heaven help me, spondee) many, many, many times and I still didn't get it. At all.

Even though he couldn't explain it to me himself, Hirsch did not abandon me there. He recommended some other books on the topic. I thought for a while about whether I wanted to pursue it. One of the promises I made to myself was that I wasn't going to get too academic about all this. But I decided that this is actually something I want to understand and so I got a copy of Derek Attridge's 'Poetic Rhythm' and started reading it last weekend. I made it through the first chapter and it's a lot more inspiring than I expected it to be. Here is a quote I liked from page 2:

"Reading poetry requires time; each word needs to emerge and fulfill itself before we go onto the next. A poem is a real-time event. Our habit of skimming for sense when we read a newspaper or a novel, of barely noticing the little words that take us from one kernel of meaning to the next, is a great asset in modern civilization, but it doesn't stand us in good stead when it comes to poetry, which simply cannot work as poetry if it is read in this way."

I think that explains at least one of the reasons why reading poetry is so hard or at least doesn't come very naturally to someone like me.

So, I'm one chapter in. Do I understand what meter is now? Not really. Not yet. But Attridge assures me that if I can read and understand English, then I can get this. I believe him. On the bright side, I do know what a scansion is now. But I have another question. I do not blame anyone else for my ignorance, but really- shouldn't I, at some point, have seen this in school?

The 21 Steps

This is pretty fun. Cool interactive maps, exciting foreign cities, cloak-and-dagger thrills- what more could you want? I read about it first on Bronwyn Jones' site, Present Imperfect, which I like a lot.

Scottish Love Poems

I ordered this one a few months ago and finally found it smoldering in my mailbox last week. I'll write about the insides later, but I loved one of the blurbs on the back cover:

"Far from the dourness and taciturnity of legend, the Scot appears here as a lover only slightly less impressive than the Italian."
-The Times

That made me laugh. I grew up listening to Roddy Frame and The Trashcan Sinatras so I guess I was better prepared than The Times for the lack of dourness. As I expected, there's some great stuff here....

Like the Hugh MacDiarmid I was reading last week, some of the poems are in Scots, which can be a challenge. Often I can puzzle it out by reading aloud. The bonus is getting to sound like a female Groundskeeper Willie. Och!

Back To Keats

My reading these past two weeks has meandered over the place.  I read Lee Siegel's Against The Machine after reading Janet Maslin's review in the New York Times.  I might talk about it here later, but for now I'll just say that he has some interesting things to say about the place and the meaning of the Internet in our lives.  It's especially thought-provoking for someone who has just started to write a blog.  

Next, I read a little bit of The Meaning of Sunglasses.  The author is sharp and very witty, maybe too witty.  I just tip-toed through it and returned it to the library.

Then I read a few early poems by Hugh McDiarmid but I can tell that's going to be a whole new project so...

It was time to go back to Keats.  When I first started reading Keats, just on my own with nothing but the limited notes in the back of the book to guide me, there were 4 poems that seized me immediately.  One of them was Ode to Psyche. Again, this wasn't an experience of completely understanding what I was reading and more one of the words themselves having an effect on me deeper than what I could explain.  This week I really studied Ode to Psyche, looking both at what Bate's biography had to say about it and also reading in Keats' letters. 

I gather from Bate's remarks that the Ode to Psyche is considered by critics to be the weakest of the odes.  I will have to study the others as intensively before I can know if I agree with that.  To me, the reader unburdened by any knowledge of poetry, it stood out as the most immediately accessible.  (And I don't think it's because of Scritti Politti, though this is still one of the greatest albums of my lifetime.) 

No, it's a feeling I got from the language, the words, whatever the alchemy of poetry is.  I did completely relate to the underlying subject matter even though at the time I didn't know what that was in any concrete way.  I especially loved the lines:

        A rosy sanctuary will I dress
    With the wreath'd trellis of a working brain,
        With buds, and bells, and stars without a name.

       
One of the things that makes Keats such an inspirational figure to me is that he was largely self-taught.  He came from a lower-middle class background without many advantages.  Poetry and an artistic life were not handed to him.  Since discovering poetry I have so often wished that I could read the way I used to listen to music growing up- with a consuming adolescent ferocity, bedroom door shut tightly against all distractions, against a hostile world.  But I'm not young anymore.  I can't do that.  There are others beings entrusted to my care and so I am part of the world.  I have to read and study in stolen moments, in fits and starts.  But I will.  I do.  It means so much to me.

 Another of my favorite lines from the Ode to Psyche is this: "I see and sing by my own eyes inspired."  Edward Hirsch writes, "Keats offers us the very model of a self-directed artistic development as a life well lived." Yes.  

Article

I really liked this article from today's NYT. I never tire of the story of Andrew Carnegie and his love of libraries.

My Poet

I've said that until a few months ago I'd never read poetry, but I don't know if that is actually true. Before I had poetry, I had music. I've spent most of my life lost and found in the lyrics of some very gifted wordsmiths: Roddy Frame (Aztec Camera), Paddy McAloon (Prefab Sprout), The Trashcan Sinatras and Paul Weller (The Jam, The Style Council) especially. Could these songs- with their imagery-soaked, layered, meaningful lyrics- also be considered poetry? I don't know officially how that works. I do see a big difference- with songs you have the music and the performance, with poetry everything has to be done with the words alone. But I still think that some song lyrics are very poetic.

All the artists mentioned above deserve close attention but I'll start with Roddy Frame. I've been a fan of his for a very long time (let's not count) and my appreciation only intensifies as the years go by. It is his voice I seek when the nights are long and dark. His lyrics have some utterly gorgeous imagery, and his use of language can be both startlingly unique yet completely natural-sounding at the same time. I don't know if he considers his work poetry. I've only read a few interviews with him, but in those his remarks are quite humble. It seems unlikely that he would ever call himself a poet in that type of situation- press for records and gigs- no matter what he may think about his work. But he clearly reads poetry and his songs aren't pure genius by accident- so I mean, he knows what he's doing. Whatever he calls it.

In 'How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry,' Edward Hirsch quotes Paul Valery:

"A poet's function- do no be startled by this remark- is not to experience the poetic state: that is a private affair. His function is to create it in others. The poet is recognized- or at least everyone recognizes his own poet- by the simple fact that he causes the reader to become 'inspired.'"

By that definition Roddy Frame is indeed a poet: he is my poet.

Necessary Speech

As I mentioned earlier, Edward Hirsch wrote the illuminating, moving introduction to the Modern Library edition of Keats' poetry. I saw on the back cover that he had also written a book called 'How To Read A Poem And Fall I Love With Poetry,' which I read for the first time while traveling over the holidays. Hirsch is an amazingly beautiful and generous writer and he is passionate about poetry. If I needed any additional encouragement to pursue my new obsession with poetry, I found it here. Here is a little bit from the Preface:

"In this book I'd like to make poems as available and accessible, as passionate and disturbing, as I feel them to be. Poetry is a form of necessary speech. People who care about it know that poems have magical potency. But now there are many people who have become so estranged from the devices and techniques of poetry, from poetic thinking, that they no longer recognize what they are reading. Reading poetry is endangered, I suppose, because reading itself is endangered in our culture now."

The last sentence is interesting to me, and I don't know if I can completely agree with it. I've always read a lot. A lot. But I never read poetry. Now, the earlier sentence about being estranged from poetic devices and techniques rings very true to me. Reading poetry seems very different from other types of reading because one needs to pay such concentrated attention to each individual word. Poetry is so condensed, compact, and it has to be unfolded slowly. And it helps to keep returning to a poem, again and again, which I don't think we do with books very often. It is rare to take that kind of time and care over our reading, even if we are confirmed readers. But it is worth it. I am discovering that there are things I can get from poetry that I can't get anywhere else in life.

A little further down the page Hirsch says, "...I believe that in the end poems strike something deeper than thought itself." Yes. I feel lucky to have found such a guide.