sorrow's springs

I did my little presentation on poetry and imperfection today. I hope L wasn't... offended or off-put. Because I just don't really know how I can engage with the idea of the perfect poem, or of what is beautiful to me--which was really the point, right?--without dealing w/ imperfection, temporariness, ephemerality, etc.

I felt like crying while reading the poems (not mine, 2 auden and 1 roethke. maybe I will post them) and pretty much couldn't even get thru the last line of my paper. then i went into my office and cried, for what (i agree with hopkins) is really the best and only reason: that everything i love and everything that is beautiful will pass away.

sorrow's springs are the same--yes. Loss is loss, over and over again, in different forms. I don't know about it being myself I mourn for--because I am very concerned over my own mortality, of course. And if I could live for a million years that would take a lot of the sting out of losing things, because I'd like to see what would happen. But I don't know, I think I could die in more peace knowing or believing that the things I loved would persist after me; that might be enough of a comfort.

Thinking of that James Dickey poem... while the notion of ceasing to exist, being unable to perceive anything, and moreover, unaware that you are unable to perceive anything--the idea of say, actually being killed and eaten by a wild animal holds no terror. I think I would be comfortable with going like that, actually. Not literally comfortable, because being chewed up is no doubt painful. But I could accept my end if it was at the hands of something beautiful that I respected, that overpowered me, and that I could help to go on.

Because I think of "immortality," persistence w.r.t. art--I have been terribly ambitious. I have burned to add something huge and lasting to stories, literature, etc. (I don't know how ambitious I am now, because I guess I feel like I have to do this, and will do this, regardless of the "rewards"). But I think I'd be okay with people not knowing it was *me,* or thinking someone else had done it, so long as something I created could persist.

Maybe this is just a translation of the reproductive urge, which thankfully I don't feel in a literal sense, or maybe, too, it's something less selfish--a desire to give something, a thing that will live and give back and exist outside yourself, for others besides yourself--that your life does not end when your life does, that you can affect things in a positive way beyond the span of your life.

Anyway, shit, I basically pulled a Margaret. Story of my childhood, if not my whole life. I meant the "sensitive poet" thing facetiously, but...shit, man.

Hopkins and prosody

I did a presentation for my prosody class on Hopkins and I think that went well; I scanned it first according to his own prosody, or at least I tried to, and then according to how I thought it ought to be scanned. I'm down with the idea of feet of 1, 2, 3, or 4 syllables, but it just does not make sense to me to always break the feet so that the stressed syllable is first in the foot. He apparently chose that in part because music is scored that way, but I don't think it accurately represents language, and you have to do some weird stuff to even scan it like that.

I struggle with how to break feet. My way makes sense to *me,* but I'm not sure how much of a priority pauses and clause-breaks and stuff are, in traditional scansion, and I do end up with some sort of weird feet that are based more on old Latin quantitative stuff than they are on English, which is accentual.

Maybe we need something new, for English. The 2 and 3 syllable, 1 stress per foot thing is not quite cutting it for me. I will have to work this out well though and make sure it's really better than traditional scansion, and not confusing or overly complex. I am still a noob now, though. A young upstart in the wide, controversial world of scansion. :P

I also read the poem, of course (The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo; such a wonderful poem). K said it was the best reading of Hopkins he'd ever heard. So that was very flattering of course. He said if there was a way to make a living reading Hopkins, I should do it.

Is there a way? Because if so I totally would (originally typed "wood").

I am thinking of trying to make street-money off of poetry. Writing poems from my little table for a dollar a line, or reciting Hopkins poems for 50 cents until my voice wears out or something. I could hand out a sheet so people could follow along, and then they could keep the sheet, so they'd feel like they were getting something besides just my reading.

I did the typical "So let's scan the poem, guys!" thing, and everyone was like "Uhhh," and shook their heads no. Hopkins' prosody isn't *that* scary, is it? I mean, sure, there are a lot of stresses. Just make them one syllable feet like he did :D Or make them spondees next to regular feet.

I just read some Hopkins poems I hadn't before. Some really amazing lines, and also a good deal of "not really sure what you're talking about there." Knowing that would help (out loud) reading. And comprehension/enjoyment, obviously.

I did for the first time wish that his poems weren't all so Christian. Not just Christian, because plenty of other poems/poets were, but like... it seems like the 2nd stanza of like every poem sort of diverges off onto God, and it seems overall relatively uniform in form and content in that respect. Not that he didn't struggle with his own religious beliefs, and not that his beliefs/portrayal of God and so on weren't nuanced at all, but I guess I wonder about the range of thoughts and sentiments and ideas and implications that he *could* have expressed, or rather, perhaps, that a different poet with such remarkable skills could have expressed. He is so unique that it's almost a bit hard for me to separate the poet as an idea-maker from the poet as a language-user, here. But my god, that could be breathtaking.

He is so amazing, all the same. Oh Gerard. *sigh*

Soaring sighs deliver, etc. But to his poetry, rather than to God--sorry GMH.

Oh, I also felt a bit of Auden's whole problem with the beautiful poetic untruth. Like Hopkins' work can affect me emotionally and I can feel/imagine a bit of those religious sentiments, even though I don't actually believe them. So yeah, there's an example of that for me.