Poetry Abroad

A phenominal expression. Written by Ronan Harris. Posting it here to share:

Before me plays the endless film
Relentless splinters I recall
Each living thing breathes life
Only sentiment remains
To liquid born, from patterns formed
The sand descends with blind intent
Where the river takes me will in time be revealed

I cannot turn my feelings down
Beyond my means to turn my thoughts around
Expressed in every word I will ever speak
Brighter than all the stars combined
More than the waters, Earth, and sky
All that I wish and all that I dream
No creed on Earth can replace or provide
In my darkest hour, the comfort I'd feel
Leading me to see I can be more than I expect of me
My beginning and my end
The first and last air that I breathe
More than the sum of everything that I will ever be

Above the waves with my hands raised
Dare the wind, lay claim to me
Knowing somehow none could take me
Wasthing the sun come up in vain
The only reason I can find why I remained
The need to leave the point I came to again and again

It didn't matter how hard I tried
It took so long to claim that I knew how
Or what it meant to let go of this
To ever say goodbye
Call it destiny, call it fate
Chose my direction: Running forward
Each life to learn anew, whatever may come

This, I can feel in the pit of my stomach, on the sizzling fibres of my ends. Consumption. Absorption. Weigh this.

The Vote: 2006

I had hoped to post earlier today, but Blogger.com was completely bogged (blogged?) down. So much for the election day rallying stump.

Voted this morning. My polling locale is the church 3 lots down from me, and as I hoofed it acrossed my neighboors backyards, enroute, I could not help but make the connection between the ease and freedom with which I was able to traverse the openness of my neighboors little slices of America, and subsequently wonder how long that sort of freewheeling existence is going to be available.

I wont mince words here, I voted straight ticket Democrat. At this point, I don't give a flying expletive what the Republicans stand for, they are Republicans, aka Federalists. Is this a knee-jerk reaction to contemporary world events? No. I suppose if I were pressed to supply one singular reason with which to explain it all, I would relate it to my sickening disdain for the propaganda machine that Republican cash bankrolls to an excess. Here is a tip: if you want people to take you seriously, and actually absorb your message... don't present it as if you are a three year old.

Do I believe in Granholm's agenda, skills, abilities what-not? Nah. I just know that DeVos is a complete mistake. My theory is that "we the people" afforded Engler 12 years to destroy Michigan, we should at least give his predecesor 12 years to repair it. Right? Anyone who thinks that Granholm has done a bad job needs to pull their head out of their ass and understand that life, contrary to what you wish, is not delivered to you on a silver platter instantaneously whenever you ring-a-ling your little bell.

If you did get out and vote today, good for you. If you didn't... wake up! Apathy is a one-way ticket to failure.

Tags: John Engler, Jennifer Granholm, Michigan Election

The Lucidity of Love

This is my first attempt at a literary critique based on a poem.

There is, and always shall be two things that we humans have in common; we live, and we die. How we choose to fill the pages in-between, immortalizes the poetry of our existence, and whether we would like to admit it or not, we are all poets. As thoughtful, emotional beings, we travel the wheel of expression, on a life long journey that can seem an eternity of moments, and yet is really nothing more than a brief cosmic exhale. Among this well spring of feelings we find ourselves prone to posses, is perhaps the strongest and most inexorable of all sentiments; love. True love knows no bounds, no conditions. Is limitless in potency, and often defies description. As such not only do we find ourselves awe struck by love, but it inspires… even dares us to create in it’s name. One poet who has notably used love as an anchoring theme throughout a large portion of his works, was William Shakespeare. For the focus of this essay, the discussion will be refined specifically to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73. Additionally, it will demonstrate how Sonnet 73 contains usages of metaphor relevant to conveying the essence of true love‘s view towards mortality, a theme present throughout Shakespeare’s work.

Given that we are all natural beings, our existence is a cyclical tale. Just as the seasons of the year change, so too do we exhibit a changing progression throughout our lives. With our youth representing Spring, and our young adulthood that of Summer, we eventually find ourselves in the Autumn of our mortality, and finally the Winter of our waning days. It is this imagery Shakespeare uses so eloquently to describe a man nearing the end of his life.

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. (663)

Despite the inherent beauty in these words, critics such as Unicio Violli have pointed to this as indicating negative feelings that Shakespeare was struggling within his own life; ‘the metaphors give us a minute and vivid picture of Shakespeare's desolate feelings’ (Violli par. 13). While the character is undergoing an internal conflict, we also know that he is addressing someone outside himself, and this is further emphasized through the word structure ‘or none, or few’ (663). This is indicative of a quite hesitance, and the solemn resign that is often displayed in people who have accepted their fate and given up hope. He knows based on how he feels that he is nearing the end of his days; ‘those boughs which shake against the cold’ (663). He is aging, becoming frail; perhaps he has grown thinner over the years and so his flesh offers less protection against the elements. In the final stanza of the first quatrain; ‘Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang’ the impression that he has grown exceedingly old is further reinforced through an analogy eluding to the possibility that he was once a very comely fellow, and this physical beauty lasted long into his old age, and yet, even that is now gone from his visage.

The second quatrain primarily echoes that which was spoken in the first,

In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self that seals up all in rest. (663)

The difference here in Shakespeare’s choice of metaphor, is the shift he makes from terrestrial to the celestial. With word choices such as “twilight,” “sunset” and “black night” we are invited to move our thoughts beyond the confines of mortality and gaze towards the heavens where does exist the void. Adding another layer to the uncertainty of death, and a hidden hope that it be like sleep. Another point in which Violli seems to agree with me; ‘a secondary metaphor in which night is compared not to death but to death's best imitator, sleep and rest’ (Violli par. 13). However Violli goes on to assert ‘that is how Shakespeare feels-almost on the point of death’ (Violli par. 13). Yet there are those of us who would disagree. Violli, like so many other scholars, approaches his interpretation from the perspective of a new historicist, and he relies heavily on the notion that Shakespeare was a confessional poet when defining the author’s meaning. My aim is to avoid that sort of assumption, and stick with raw face value metaphoric interpretation. That being said, we see the character of Sonnet 73 first looking inward upon himself, and then outward towards the externally unknown. On the verge of shedding his mortal coil, he acknowledges the fading of his energy using “sunset” as powerful, archetypal imagery. Furthermore, this metaphor is tactfully used to tie the second stanza back into the underlying cyclical / seasonal theme. So much here is implied rather than stated. Shakespeare leads us to imagine the rising of that ‘second self,’ the moon, held sacred by so many cultures, and the driving force behind seasonal change.

Which brings us to the third quatrain, that may seem to some just more of the same type of metaphor, with the same calculated result, yet this is not true. At this point a distinct shift takes place within the poem, and the speaker is no longer referring to is / was and will be, but rather something more intangible, something which cannot be superficially measured. Here we sense the first allusion to the idea that the speaker and the person to whom he speaks, are in love.

In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that it was nourished by. (663 - 64)

Far from the negative connotations so many critics aspire to apply to the piece, this is more an ode to the overpowering deliciousness that is life. Set aside for a moment the metaphor of the fire burning out, being smothered by it’s own ashes. Ponder instead, a gourmet meal. Picture whatever you like, so long as it is the most savory delight your taste buds have ever encountered. Recall how that first bite tasted to you, and even the second. You continued to consume the dish, but slowly as does happen, you found yourself growing accustomed to the flavor. By the time you reached your last morsel, perhaps you felt full, stuffed, as if you had just experienced almost too much of a good thing. This is how the fellow in Sonnet 73 is looking back upon his life, as he now lays at the end of it. To take a biological approach, it is quite possible to say that we are dying a small bit everyday. While our environment, our reality is filled with sweet sensations and tasty experiences, all the while there is an under current of inevitable decay. Slowly we reach the end of the meal that is our time on this Earth. Yet here the speaker points out that even while now spent, his love sees within him the fires of his youth. Call it blindness, or selective imagery, but it is undeniable that love is behind this. Love leads us to focus on the best qualities, and most meaningful moments shared with those we love.

What remains of the son