In the morning I hung out with Betsy and we mused about syntax and grief; in the afternoon Teresa and I also mused over syntax, this time in relation to our surprised pleasure in revisiting the poems of Pope and Swift. As I said to Tom in the evening, in Harmony I never spent the bulk of any day socializing via conversations about syntax. I never talked to anyone about syntax. What is this undiscovered world?
Teresa and I have been trying to prepare ourselves for a deep dive into Lyrical Ballads, the original published version of Wordsworth and Coleridge's collaborative collection. But first we wanted to revisit the eighteenth-century poets, and now we're feeling that we need to embark on a side trip into the proto-romantics Cowper and Southey. It's taking us a very long time to get going on this project, but I have to say that Swift and Pope delighted us--a thrill for me, as I remember slogging through Pope in high school and thinking that I might have to poke out my eyes with pencils. I love to be wrong.
Swift, though, I've always adored. As I said to Teresa, his poems are a straight arrow into the novels of Dickens: cluttered comedic observations of London life, nearly cinematic in their sensory clarity. They are a joy. And now it turns out that Pope is clear, intelligent, witty, and precise--as a critic much more interesting to me than, say T. S. Eliot. What a discovery! Who knows: maybe Cowper and Southey will be wonderful too. I can only hope.
So I had an exciting day, lit up by conversations with two of the finest poets I know, diving into the poetry of the past in ways that made the past feel muscular and alive. Betsy and I wandered along the river-edges of Dante and Milton. Teresa and I couldn't stop talking about the prosaic old rhymed couplet--how Swift and Pope unreeled the form so immaculately, so uniquely, each to such different purpose.
For me, these kinds of conversations are a love language. I don't know how else to put it. I come away from them feeling like my heart has cracked open. I get overwrought: I pace around the house: I want to slip Valentines under my friends' doors; I want to sketch little pictures of them in the margins of my notebook.
And still to come this winter: reading Lear with my younger son. So much to look forward to.
Take that, horrible incoming president and your pack of hyenas. We read the hard books over here. We read them, and we talk about them, and then we read more. You fuckers. Just try to stop us.
5 comments:
👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
...and here I am, gauche as hell. I don't know Swift's poems. Would you point me in the right direction? I've been immersed in Dickens' Hard Times with my kiddos of late, and they are seeing some remarkable similarities with our current state of affairs. Bounderby, indeed.
A Description of Morning
Jonathan Swift
Now hardly here and there a hackney-coach
Appearing, showed the ruddy morn’s approach.
Now Betty from her master’s bed had flown,
And softly stole to discompose her own;
The slip-shod ’prentice from his master’s door
Had pared the dirt and sprinkled round the floor.
Now Moll had whirled her mop with dext’rous airs,
Prepared to scrub the entry and the stairs.
The youth with broomy stumps began to trace
The kennel-edge, where wheels had worn the place.
The small-coal man was heard with cadence deep,
Till drowned in shriller notes of chimney-sweep:
Duns at his lordship’s gate began to meet;
And brickdust Moll had screamed through half the street.
The turnkey now his flock returning sees,
Duly let out a-nights to steal for fees:
The watchful bailiffs take their silent stands,
And schoolboys lag with satchels in their hands.
Thank you so much!! I suspect I'll be using this on Monday!
I’ve been reading these daily letters quietly, a shyly lurking and admiring audience. But that last paragraph pushed me to show my grinning face and applaud,
Post a Comment