Friday, April 29, 2005


				
				
					 
					 
Poetry

					 
				

				


				
I thought I'd mention that I finally get poetry.  Not that I fully understand all the subtle nuances (or even the unsubtle ones), but I finally understand the appeal.  

For a while, I read T.S. Eliot exclusively, and by that I mean I simply read The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock over and over again.  Which is a fabulous poem, of course, but there are definitely more poets out there.  POETRY magazine demonstrated  this to me.

So now I have a little ritual, where everyday I take a poem to school, something to pull out during dull moments.  Some of them are better than others, but they're all strangely calming and equilibrating, most of all the ones that send your emotions for a thrill.  For a while I brought Frank O'Hara's For Grace, After a Party, then e. e. cummings's since feeling is first, and right now I'm in the middle of Dylan Thomas's oddly lilting Under Milk Wood.  Love poetry I like better than most, but I'm gradually growing to appreciate nature/people poems too - although I'm not sure I'll ever learn to enjoy Stephen-Crane-type war poems.  
I am a draper mad with love.  I love you more than all the flannelette and calico, candlewick, dimity, crash and merino, tussore, cretonne, crépon, muslin, poplin, ticking and twill in the whole Cloth Hall of the world.  I have come to take you away to my Emporium on the hill, where the change hums on wires.  Throw away your little bedsocks and your Welsh wool knitted jacket, I will warm the sheets like an electric toaster, I will lie by your side like the Sunday roast.
Nevertheless, it's nice to exit a stuffy classroom, lean out of a bathroom window, and exclaim to the parking lot.


				


				

					posted by Debbie at 7:45 PM