Codename: Tara
Howdy, pardner. So, you've been smashing vases lately--great! But when I heard your human voice you gave me pause.
You asked me, "Am I doing it correctly?"
Correctly? I guess, to rip off the Mythbusters' line, I'm what you call an 'expert.' (For anyone who's interested, I have four Ivy League degrees I won't be using, value "priceless," but I will take Mastercard.) That said, whenever anyone tried to hand me the Professors' Answer Book to Solving Poetry, my hands were full. Cigarette, beer, rare fossils . . . binoculars for spying field marks on birds who never comply with the descriptions in the guides.
A field guide to the poems? Look for enjambment. In grad school my peers talked like that, and they thought I was a stoner from California. I flunked my first presentation on Emily Dickenson by reading "hard" the dashes that ended her lines, only to be told by our white-haired professor that those were an editor's rendition. But I had started my career as a poem reader by feeling like a fool, and I live by that creed.
Feel like a fool. Fools take deer and daughters to heart. Experts take nothing to heart. And for what it's worth, my darling, today is a sacred anniversary in Ireland for the Hill of Tara, where the politicians are planning to plough through burial mounds older than Yeats's rough beast in order to build a highway for tourists. Another vector. Another tangent. Another arrow into the foul rag and bone shop of the heart. Our Patti IS an expert archer, despite having been born a few days too late for us to read her her horoscope under Sagitarius.
I think I spelled that wrong. Well, they can't take my diplomas away from me; I haven't been able to find them for 20 years anyway. Love, love and love, another poet.
PS: sharp shards and plenty of superglue to go around, any time you ask . . . a scout is always prepared.
You asked me, "Am I doing it correctly?"
Correctly? I guess, to rip off the Mythbusters' line, I'm what you call an 'expert.' (For anyone who's interested, I have four Ivy League degrees I won't be using, value "priceless," but I will take Mastercard.) That said, whenever anyone tried to hand me the Professors' Answer Book to Solving Poetry, my hands were full. Cigarette, beer, rare fossils . . . binoculars for spying field marks on birds who never comply with the descriptions in the guides.
A field guide to the poems? Look for enjambment. In grad school my peers talked like that, and they thought I was a stoner from California. I flunked my first presentation on Emily Dickenson by reading "hard" the dashes that ended her lines, only to be told by our white-haired professor that those were an editor's rendition. But I had started my career as a poem reader by feeling like a fool, and I live by that creed.
Feel like a fool. Fools take deer and daughters to heart. Experts take nothing to heart. And for what it's worth, my darling, today is a sacred anniversary in Ireland for the Hill of Tara, where the politicians are planning to plough through burial mounds older than Yeats's rough beast in order to build a highway for tourists. Another vector. Another tangent. Another arrow into the foul rag and bone shop of the heart. Our Patti IS an expert archer, despite having been born a few days too late for us to read her her horoscope under Sagitarius.
I think I spelled that wrong. Well, they can't take my diplomas away from me; I haven't been able to find them for 20 years anyway. Love, love and love, another poet.
PS: sharp shards and plenty of superglue to go around, any time you ask . . . a scout is always prepared.
posted by MM at 2:21 AM
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