I posted this in another spot already. But I like it, so I'm putting it in here too =)
My newest love:
Poetry.
Surprising? It is to me!
A while ago, while poking around the classics section at the Bookworm, I discovered a golden nuggest of a book, called "Immortal Poems of the English Language". It is a small but thick and slightly yellowed anthology, with a copyright date of 1952. Opening up the book to the first page, you see an introduction of sorts that starts out with a simple sentence in bold type, laid out as such:
TO LOVE,
TO SUFFER,
TO THINK...
is to seek poetry.
Captivated, I bought the volume, and now keep it in the glovebox of my car, pulling it out whenever I need someone else's insightful and organized words to calm the chaotic thoughts floating around in my own head. I'll flip through and stop at any random page, reading whatever catches my eye, and bookmarking the ones I really like with a neon colored post-it.
A coincidental string of findings lead me knee-deep into my now full-on infatuation with poems... All of a sudden I understand their magic, their ingenuity, their power.
My interest was initially sparked in my IB Lit class two years ago, when we were forced to have a poetry section in our curriculum. Though at first I had to force myself to get into it along with everyone else in the class, I ended up becoming fascinated by the works of Robert Frost. His works seemed to brim with the intelligence and thoughtfulness the man must have possessed, and many, if not all, of his poems have a focus on some element of nature, which I loved. It was only after becoming attached to a few of his works that I got up the courage to buy an actual book of poetry.
Sure enough, a few pages into my anthology is a quote from Robert Frost, which I think describes with utter perfection the sensation one gets when finding a poem that for one reason or another hits you at your core. He wrote:
"It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound-- that he will never get over it. That is to say, permanence in poetry, as in love, is perceived instantly. It hasn't to await the test of time. The proof of a poem is not that we have never forgotten it, but we knew at sight we never could forget it."
So, just recently, while flipping through the book, I settled on a poem by John Keats. Loving it, I looked up more of his works on the internet, and finally came across this particular one, which... to be poetic, struck me as if I had "taken an immortal wound." :)
"Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature’s patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death."
Yes, it has to do with stars. Which, yes, I admit, is most likely the reason that it has such intense meaning to me personally. But I think it's beautiful in any case.
Anyways, I decided to look up the word Eremite, since I didn't really know what it meant. An lo and behold, what comes up in google but a link to another Robert Frost poem! Reading it, I fell even more in love than I had with the previous, partly because of the insight and uniqueness, but also because of how he manages to stick in a perfect allusion to Keats' poem, skillfully and seamlessly aiding his own point!
Again, with the stars-and-me thing. But I hope other people can find some enjoyment from this too!
"O Star (the fairest one in sight),
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud --
It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud.
But to be wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed.
Say something to us we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat.
Say something! And it says "I burn."
But say with what degree of heat.
Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.
It gives us strangely little aid,
But does tell something in the end.
And steadfast as Keats' Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid."
I say it's marvelous. Purely and transcendentally marvelous.
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