When Did You Read?

Back when the Internet was young and online shopping even younger, I was enchanted by the idea of C.S. Lewis's Poems because of talk that the volume contained some Narnia poetry. Then being obsessed with Narnia, Poems then seemed like the unattainable portal to more Narnia content. Now that some fifteen or more years later I find Poems in my hands, I'm rather glad that I didn't get a copy of it back then.

There isn't much Narnia content in here. Despite the unicorn on the cover, that angle is covered quite thinly. So if that is your sole reason for coming to this book, well, you'll probably be disappointed in that regard. And I would say you're best off if you're already familiar with several of Lewis's writings, maybe a touch of Narnia but more so with his non-fiction or even at times with The Space Trilogy.

The book was put together posthumously and first published in 1964. It loosely goes by topic rather than year since many of these poems are written at unidentified times. And yet from the content and style, you can begin to guess at what point in his life he wrote them.

You see the young man enraptured by his college studies and writing poems about it all. The imaginative mind dreaming up unicorns and gnomes. Quite frankly, though, reading all this as who I am today, these were the pages I found least interesting. They felt more shallow and uninteresting to my mind at this moment. Better I found the reflections on nature versus industry and the pain of life and love.

Poetry is a very honest art form--perhaps even more so if, like many of these, it is not written specifically with publication in mind. So the titles that show with stark honesty all the pain that we cannot shut away or escape in living are the most thought-provoking. You can see the thoughts that were part of certain concepts Lewis explores in both his fiction and non-fiction writings. While a few of these poems are quite nice on their own, overall I'd say this book's best value is as a kind of companion piece to his other works.

John Keats & the Art of Beauty

Last month I wrote about the emotional quality of John Keats's poetry. I also mentioned that I had been moving slowly (quite slowly) through his complete poems. Actually mentioning this fact of my slow reading made me feel like I really had better just finish the volume instead of dragging it out any longer. Add to that the fact that I have a specific reason right now for wanting to get my voice used to speaking for a long period of time, and I decided to read Keats for an hour out loud every day. Here's to hoping my neighbors couldn't hear me reading out all of his love poems.

Reading in this daily way, like how you would read a novel, proved quite different from reading in order to provide literary analysis. I had no pressure to think of any particular topic or to think with any admiration toward any particular piece. So I easily settled in to enjoying a particular poem or passage--or disliking a particular poem or passage. I didn't care much, for instance, for his experiments (is it bad that I'm calling them experiments?) with plays; while Otho the Great did have its moments, these moments were the times when the lines reminded me most of the regular poems. And I can see why even Keats wrote in his preface for Endymion that certain sections were weaker or better than others; I tended to agree with him that there were some wonderful sections and also some that didn't quite keep my interest.

The greatest power that Keats had, as a writer, was his ability to put together beautiful language. This is why we love his descriptions of nature and of love--they're simple concepts that can fold out into an endless array of images and emotions. So even when he is writing his longer poems that have multiple characters and bigger plot lines, these moments of description are still the best. (I'm not even going to try and give examples because this is just a short blog post; I don't have space to go into more detail.)

But what I also found in this daily reading was the hollow quality of beauty for beauty's sake. Keats intentionally focused on beauty--and the results are indeed beautiful. But when you are focusing only on beauty in, shall we say, a more shallow sense of the word, then the impact can only go so far. You admire how a rose looks and you smell its aroma and then you're done; that's it--it can give you no more. That's how Keats can be. Don't get me wrong; I much prefer Keats to Oscar Wilde. Wilde was also about aesthetics above all else--but in a different way. I think Keats more respected the world around him--and he loved the natural world, which Wilde I think couldn't stand (that quote where he says that manmade chairs are so much better than anywhere you can sit in nature--that just describes every way in which Wilde and I disagree).

Back to Keats. His poetry is oftentimes, as we know, tragic. That's part of what makes it beautiful; we all love a good tragedy. But it's also part of what keeps his work from having deeper meaning. He remarks on beauty but he gives no hope--beauty in itself (this definition of beauty, that is) is not enough to give hope, especially for all of the tragedy that he describes.

I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, artistically speaking. A single poem (or any single piece of whatever kind of art) can only do so much. That's where the reader (or viewer) comes in. We absorb each piece individually for what it offers and then we put them together in our minds. This artist shows us this and that artist taught us that and so on--until we have our heads filled with art in all its contexts. We look at pretty things and we feel different emotions and we ponder different themes--and then we draw conclusions and live our lives, with all of this art sitting somewhere in the background.

"'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' -- that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know" ("Ode on a Grecian Urn") That is what beautiful art tells us, but it is not what we know when we are done admiring said beautiful art.

Poetry of the Southwest

There are some books that speak to your soul, some books that are written so much in your style and seem to have so much to do with the landscape of your life--some books that you simply feel grateful for the opportunity to read.

The Poplar Tree was such a book for me. I mentioned buying it at a thrift store last month (click here to see what else I got there); I thought it looked like a nice book that I would like. And I was very much right.

Clara Emily Guion Aguirre was born and raised in New Mexico; she moved to Texas after she was married. From an early age all the way through the rest of her life, she wrote poetry. This book, the first of two that she published, covers poems from 1918 to 1986. That's 68 years of her life. She was born, by the way, in 1906 and died in 1997 (this book was published in 1988 by Nightjar Press). All of the poems are labeled with the year they were written in and they appear in chronological order, which is in itself fascinating: different thoughts go through our heads at different stages of our lives.

Her poems are short and simple, never taking up more than a page each and often being only around fifteen lines long. There is nothing flowery about them and that is what makes them so beautiful. Sometimes they are descriptions of an element from nature (like a poplar tree), sometimes they describe a feeling (it was easy to guess at what stage Clara's husband died), and sometimes they describe a thought (like a realization of what time means in terms of our lives). Though not all of these poems are happy, they are all grateful, written with a realization of what life is and the desire and resolution to live that life.

The Southwest speaks to my heart and it spoke to Clara's heart, too, and that's why I took such delight in seeing her conversations, so to speak, with the earth and the plants and the animals that inhabit this corner of the earth. Her poem "The Desert" (1955) on page 30 was one of the best things I've read, a true ode to the life of the desert. I want everyone to read that poem, to find it, to see it, to think of it: it explains what makes the desert compelling, all without pretense or hyperbole or blind eyes that see only pretty colors. "Reflection" (1959) on page 44 was also one of my favorites, and speaking of eyes, I think this poem did open my eyes and remind me of a certain reality that I think perhaps I was forgetting.

I am so happy that I found this book, this book that I wouldn't have found anywhere else but that particular thrift store on that particular day. As far as I know, it only had one printing, so if you want to buy a copy online, the price is exorbitant (I have to include the Amazon ad just to show you that I'm not exaggerating). I think there are some anthologies that include some of Clara's poetry, but I can't tell you for sure. That being said, I wish there were a reprint of this book to make it once more accessible: it's absolutely lovely and I wish more people had the chance to read these poems.

Whisking Up the Poems Again

Back in March, I wrote about some of my favorite poems from the Brontës in a copy I got from the university library. While the copy of my own I have now acquired is not nearly as exciting in looks, it appears to be pretty much the same in content--and font/typeset/whatever-you-would-call-that.

This copy is part of the Classic Reprint Series and was in fact just published last year. While it is an unexciting paperback, it was also a simple price of eight dollars--compare that to other prices you might find for Poems and you'll appreciate what this series does. It's making rarer, "Forgotten Books" available to the public at an affordable price. And what I was trying to explain about the "typeset" was that I believe the format and font and everything of this book is identical to the original published copy of Poems. Hence the phrase "classic reprint" rather than simply "forgotten classics." In the back, there is even a page with original advertisements for the sisters' novels--which, you'll note, were published after the first publication of Poems.

If you go to the Forgotten Books website, you can download up to five ebook versions for free if, unlike me, you prefer ebooks to physical copies.

Neglected, Little, Splendid Brontë Poems

But alas, the library due date for my copy of Poems has come yet again and I've decided I shouldn't keep renewing it anymore. How I shall miss thee, dearie, little book. I was beginning to think you were mine, so accustomed had I grown to seeing you perching on my desk.

As you can see, this copy was the 1978 edition by Rowman and Littlefield. The library had two different versions and while the other was a much earlier edition, I chose this one because it still referred to the sisters under their pseudonyms (Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell). I thought that meant it would be more like the original copy they published.

Being such a, ah, fan of the Brontës, it was a pleasure to read their poems, even if they are recognized (almost only) for their novels. True, some of the poems in here weren't the most wonderful in the world, but some were rather good and all of them helped to illuminate the sisters' writing as a whole.

Although Charlotte is the one I claim to have the greatest connection with, often Emily's poems seemed to come across with the greatest (or most often) strength, making me wonder why they aren't read more. Maybe I can see why the casual reader wouldn't read them, but why don't literary scholars read them more? In classes I have taken as an undergraduate, there are poems we have read that I felt weren't as "good" as some of the ones in this book. (Of course, I understand that, as a scholar, you read things for a variety of reasons: it may be their artistic merit, their subject matter, their popularity at the time they were written, etc.).

As much for my own records as anyone else's, I kept notes on which poems stood out while I read. From Charlotte: "Mementos," "Frances," "The Teacher's Monologue," "Preference," "Evening Solace," and "the Missionary." The last one, naturally, reminded me of St. John: I'm beginning to see his character in a new way and reading this poem helped me see just what Charlotte may have intended with his character. From Emily: "Stars," "The Philosopher," "Remembrance," "The Prisoner," "Hope," "Sympathy," "Plead For Me," and "The Old Stoic."While some of Charlotte's poems I marked because of how they reminded me of her other writings, Emily's poems were often very good on their own. She seems to be the one who got the most out of this format (although I really shouldn't compare them). From Anne: "Home," "Memory," "The Student's Serenade," and "Fluctuations." While I certainly marked less of her poems, you have to love Anne's artistic voice. "Fluctuations" was actually the last poem in the collection and it was very beautiful. (It also reminded me somewhat of Midnight Sun. Enough said on that sub-topic.)

Now I sigh. I'll have to get my own copy of Brontë poems someday.