I think so much depends on school and how your English teacher conveyed things to you. My English teacher was Welsh and she'd get a tear in her eye when reciting Dylan Thomas poems to us. She transferred through her passion, eye, recitation, explanation and ear the poetry. She taught us the life stories of the poets. Thomas, Auden, Wordsworth, Hughes, Larkin. She obliged us to learn by heart two poems off a list she gave us - I can still recite Tyger, Tyger and I Am by John Clare off the top of my head.
So her education encapsulated so much more than the poems themselves. It was about what the poems meant in the lives of the poets and therefore what they could mean in our lives. I still think of her often. And the poems she taught us.
Interesting pairing of Bishop and Herbert, Herbert being important to Bishop and an influence ("The Man-Moth"). In her letters she notes that she gave her students "Love Unknown" to study.
Esso eventually became Exxon, so you won't see the cans lined up that way anymore. Bishop says that the "so-so-so" is what you used to say to high-strung horses but feared that the reference was being lost even when she wrote the poem.
I don’t know if this is a common experience, but I found that I didn’t really start to cultivate a proper appreciation for poetry until I began to try to translate foreign-language poetry. In high school, very few English-language poems appealed to me. When we began to translate Virgil in my Latin class, however(and especially when we translated Horace), I was properly enthralled. I think translation forces you to pay close attention to the language in a way that really aids the cultivation of an appreciation for poetry. It doesn’t hurt that Horace is simply a better poet than just about anyone we read in my English classes, of course.
It was a much more common experience in the past, I think, and it makes sense, because a lot of poetry appreciation is in the close details of the language and the way they create they whole effect
In high school I was in love with a lot of English language poets (Hopkins, Heaney, Yeats, and countless others), but I also got really into translating Lorca and other Spanish poets. My school didn’t teach Latin, but I ended up majoring in Classics in college, mainly so I could read the poetry in the original.
I did most of my poetry reading on my own, outside of English class. My mom is a librarian and she has a massive book collection!
For me, it was Chaucer. The antique, oddly-spelled language was much easier to understand when read aloud, so I read it aloud to myself, and it was only then that I heard it as music.
Someone has a note about Cowley (iirc) reading Spenser as a child and it having something like this effect. The same thing happened to C.S. Lewis with Spenser.
I also try to read poetry aloud when I can—I did that with translations of Beowulf and a couple Greek dramas last summer when I had a lot of time to laze about and read to myself, and I found that was very much the right way to go(I admit to also taking some amount of half-ironic pleasure in being the guy reciting Euripedes on the platform at the train station)
When I was in school, I felt like they were feeding me little crumbs of poetry, but I wanted a whole loaf— actually I also wanted to learn how to bake the bread myself...
I read it myself several times before I heard a recording of Bishop reading it to an audience and they found it VERY funny ("or oils it maybe") but some of that must have been her very dry reading
Thank you. I needed to stumble across that Herbert poem. And now I’m thinking how it sits side by side with Elizabeth Bishop’s poem here and how I like the way the last line of Filling Station sort of journeys towards Prayer (1)
I would love to see what you do with Eliot’s “Prufrock”. I love it but when I try to understand the epigraph and the ending my mind feels contorted. Dr Chuck Spurgeon
I had it in mind as something I wished to argue against, almost, in the way it is sometimes used as a colloquial quotation: it is the word "before" that I often wish to emphasise when I see that line invoked as if it means "rather than"
In the NYT AI quiz from a few months ago, the only selection where I chose the human excerpt was for poetry. I'm sure it helped quite a bit that the excerpt was from Elizabeth Bishop. I've found it easy and rewarding to inhabit her poems. This may partially because she shares biographical facts with part of my family.
A lovely reading of Bishop’s “Filling Station.” I’m mildly obsessed with the word “over-all” as she uses it — the oil coats everything, spills over her understanding of the scene in its entirety. I just posted my own piece on another of her wonderful poems, “The Fish.” Would love to hear your thoughts! https://lifeasfound.substack.com/p/the-fish-dressed-in-wallpaper
When I was very young, I discovered poetry by accident and read it for the feels. No one was telling me to read and no one was asking me if I understood it. I just knew it moved me. It wasn't until I was much older that I learned how to properly analyze a poem and take it apart. I actually loved that part of college. Dissecting poetry was one of the perks of being an English major, but I still read poetry for emotional transport as much as insight, for enjoyment more than edification, and primarily for a sense of solidarity when I'm low on courage.
AT the start of the year, I wrote an "Aspirational Reading List." It included, "at least some poetry." On vacation in April, I picked up the Penguin Book of Greek and Latin Lyric Verse. It's gonna end up being one of the best things I do this year.
I think so much depends on school and how your English teacher conveyed things to you. My English teacher was Welsh and she'd get a tear in her eye when reciting Dylan Thomas poems to us. She transferred through her passion, eye, recitation, explanation and ear the poetry. She taught us the life stories of the poets. Thomas, Auden, Wordsworth, Hughes, Larkin. She obliged us to learn by heart two poems off a list she gave us - I can still recite Tyger, Tyger and I Am by John Clare off the top of my head.
So her education encapsulated so much more than the poems themselves. It was about what the poems meant in the lives of the poets and therefore what they could mean in our lives. I still think of her often. And the poems she taught us.
How wonderful :)
Interesting pairing of Bishop and Herbert, Herbert being important to Bishop and an influence ("The Man-Moth"). In her letters she notes that she gave her students "Love Unknown" to study.
Esso eventually became Exxon, so you won't see the cans lined up that way anymore. Bishop says that the "so-so-so" is what you used to say to high-strung horses but feared that the reference was being lost even when she wrote the poem.
Loved the close read of the "Filling Station"!
thanks !
I don’t know if this is a common experience, but I found that I didn’t really start to cultivate a proper appreciation for poetry until I began to try to translate foreign-language poetry. In high school, very few English-language poems appealed to me. When we began to translate Virgil in my Latin class, however(and especially when we translated Horace), I was properly enthralled. I think translation forces you to pay close attention to the language in a way that really aids the cultivation of an appreciation for poetry. It doesn’t hurt that Horace is simply a better poet than just about anyone we read in my English classes, of course.
It was a much more common experience in the past, I think, and it makes sense, because a lot of poetry appreciation is in the close details of the language and the way they create they whole effect
In high school I was in love with a lot of English language poets (Hopkins, Heaney, Yeats, and countless others), but I also got really into translating Lorca and other Spanish poets. My school didn’t teach Latin, but I ended up majoring in Classics in college, mainly so I could read the poetry in the original.
I did most of my poetry reading on my own, outside of English class. My mom is a librarian and she has a massive book collection!
For me, it was Chaucer. The antique, oddly-spelled language was much easier to understand when read aloud, so I read it aloud to myself, and it was only then that I heard it as music.
Someone has a note about Cowley (iirc) reading Spenser as a child and it having something like this effect. The same thing happened to C.S. Lewis with Spenser.
I also try to read poetry aloud when I can—I did that with translations of Beowulf and a couple Greek dramas last summer when I had a lot of time to laze about and read to myself, and I found that was very much the right way to go(I admit to also taking some amount of half-ironic pleasure in being the guy reciting Euripedes on the platform at the train station)
yes! recite!
When I was in school, I felt like they were feeding me little crumbs of poetry, but I wanted a whole loaf— actually I also wanted to learn how to bake the bread myself...
“The Filling Station” was poetry in pictorial motion to me. I also found it quite funny.
“We must let the poem teach us how to read it.”
I read it as ironically hilarious.
*******
“The soul can only be paraphrased”
Can something be paraphrased that cannot first be phrased?
I read it myself several times before I heard a recording of Bishop reading it to an audience and they found it VERY funny ("or oils it maybe") but some of that must have been her very dry reading
“The milky way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood,
The land of spices; something understood.”
The ending is so good that I wonder if he came up with it first!
Thank you. I needed to stumble across that Herbert poem. And now I’m thinking how it sits side by side with Elizabeth Bishop’s poem here and how I like the way the last line of Filling Station sort of journeys towards Prayer (1)
Yes I liked that juxtaposition :)
I would love to see what you do with Eliot’s “Prufrock”. I love it but when I try to understand the epigraph and the ending my mind feels contorted. Dr Chuck Spurgeon
Yes, so maybe some day the inspiration will hit and you’ll hear a voice saying “that is it; that is what I meant all in all”.
That would be a long piece of writing...
❤️❤️
T.S. Eliot comes to mind: „genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.“
I had it in mind as something I wished to argue against, almost, in the way it is sometimes used as a colloquial quotation: it is the word "before" that I often wish to emphasise when I see that line invoked as if it means "rather than"
Absolutely. To play experience off against understanding is to misunderstand the very nature of poetry.
In the NYT AI quiz from a few months ago, the only selection where I chose the human excerpt was for poetry. I'm sure it helped quite a bit that the excerpt was from Elizabeth Bishop. I've found it easy and rewarding to inhabit her poems. This may partially because she shares biographical facts with part of my family.
She also has a very detailed observational style that is quite inviting, to me at least
How about this one about a young woman falling for an old man?
Delicious Decay
When my love and I first met
my life had reached its medlar moment,
or the ripeness of a quince or persimmon.
I say this because I had begun to blet,
just like those fruits when ready to eat:
lightly bruised and showing signs of rot.
Unperturbed by appearances or differences
in age, I was very much to her taste.
She fancied me rotten, as they used to say
in jest, and stepped up to take a bite.
It has been my good fortune to be consumed
in this lay communion every day since then.
A lovely reading of Bishop’s “Filling Station.” I’m mildly obsessed with the word “over-all” as she uses it — the oil coats everything, spills over her understanding of the scene in its entirety. I just posted my own piece on another of her wonderful poems, “The Fish.” Would love to hear your thoughts! https://lifeasfound.substack.com/p/the-fish-dressed-in-wallpaper
When I was very young, I discovered poetry by accident and read it for the feels. No one was telling me to read and no one was asking me if I understood it. I just knew it moved me. It wasn't until I was much older that I learned how to properly analyze a poem and take it apart. I actually loved that part of college. Dissecting poetry was one of the perks of being an English major, but I still read poetry for emotional transport as much as insight, for enjoyment more than edification, and primarily for a sense of solidarity when I'm low on courage.
AT the start of the year, I wrote an "Aspirational Reading List." It included, "at least some poetry." On vacation in April, I picked up the Penguin Book of Greek and Latin Lyric Verse. It's gonna end up being one of the best things I do this year.