1. The weather heated up today in Kellogg and I happily relaxed in the Vizio room and spent much of the morning writing in my blog and writing some correspondence while listening to Dave Brubeck, often with Paul Desmond.
Around 2:30, I tuned into Billy Collins' daily broadcast.
Back at the U of Oregon in 1984-85, I spent the entire year taking courses from Prof. G. William Rockett in 17th century poetry and some prose. Professor Rockett loved the outdoors and often connected poems we studied to his love of navigating the McKenzie River in his drift boat and fly fishing. I remember one poem in particular lighting him up: Andrew Marvell's "The Garden". It's a rapturous poem, praising the quiet of a garden and the power of herbs and flowers, of apples and grapes, of trees and birds to move one's soul, to urge one to transcend the world's striving for gain. Marvell treats the garden of his poem as a paradise and Prof. Rockett felt the same way about the McKenzie River, beaming as he paralleled his experience on the river with the Edenic and sublime experience Marvell describes when the speaker of his poem retreats into the world of nature.
Billy Collins didn't read the entire poem, but read verses 5 and 6. In verse 5 the poem's speaker is ecstatic, proclaiming, "What wond'rous life in this I lead!". The speaker is referring to the garden, and goes on to detail his experience:
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach
Stumbling on melons as I pass,
Ensnar'd with flow'rs, I fall on grass.
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach
Stumbling on melons as I pass,
Ensnar'd with flow'rs, I fall on grass.
In the next verse, the poem's speaker's mind "Withdraws into its happiness" and Marvell delves into the details and experience of this happiness in this verse and the three that follow, bringing the poem to its joyful conclusion.
As Billy Collins read verses 5 and 6 and, later, when I turned to the poem and read it all, my mind, too, withdrew into its happiness.
The poem argues that what the world of achievement, material success, awards, degrees, of constant striving offers in the guise of fulfillment is inferior to the quiet and happiness one finds in the garden. The garden stands for the larger world of nature, the world of rivers, drift boating, fly fishing, waterfalls, the Oregon coast, sand dunes, wild rhododendrons, trilliums, mountain lakes, huckleberry patches, and all other such sources of beauty, all inviting us to step outside of our bodies and join the world of nature in spiritual union.
2. When I retired, one of the first things I wanted to do was see if I could experience poetry and other literature, especially Shakespeare, as not academic subject matter, not the source of a paper to write, not as a source of instruction that then became a means for students to earn grades and earn credit.
It's happening. When I listen to Bill Davie read poetry during his Tree House Concerts, nowhere in my mind do I any longer wonder how I can write an effective prompt to help students write essays on those poems, no longer am I wondering what I would say in an essay about any of the poems.
Likewise, because Billy Collins has been dedicated for many years to popularizing poetry, trying to help people experience poetry as a part of everyday life, his broadcasts have been invigorating. Last week, Billy Collins was a featured author, via the internet, at the Sonoma Valley Authors Festival. Today, I registered for the festival, went to the archives, and clicked on Billy Collins' contribution. For about a half an hour he read poems and then he and Naomi Shihab Nye conversed for a half an hour, each of them talking from home.
Somehow, I realized during this hour of poems and dialogue that, indeed, I wasn't listening to these poets for academic reasons.
It felt more like I was watching a baseball game. Anymore, when I watch baseball, I do it for the beauty of the game's rhythms, drama, and the way a baseball game alternates between periods of slowness and eruptions of action. Oh, yeah, I wanted the Nationals to win the World Series last year, but most of the time, I don't care much who wins or loses. I enjoy the experience of watching baseball.
So I listen to a poem and about the last thing I think about is its "meaning". I give myself over to the experience of the poem, its sounds, its movement, how its making me feel, what thoughts the poem is rousing in me. Poems offer insights -- don't get me wrong -- and if the poem leads me to an understanding of love or death or the afterlife or the renewing qualities of nature or anything else, I enjoy that, ponder it, live with it, but I don't have to translate any of this into an essay nor do I have to create a way for students to exchange their understanding of the poem for a grade or for credit.
I loved teaching. I loved the communal experience of enjoying poems, essays, stories, and plays with students in a classroom. But, I grew weary of the grades and the credits.
Now I can tune into Billy Collins' broadcasts, listen to him chat with Naomi Shihab Nye, listen to Bill Davie read poems on Tuesday evenings, and share poems/discuss poetry on ZOOM with the Basementeers every other Sunday afternoon and enjoy the communal experience, virtually (but communal all the same), and enjoy it without any course objectives to meet, papers to assign, papers to write, or grades at stake.
It's just what I'd hoped for when I retired.
3. I spent a lot of time in the cool of the Vizio room today, listening to jazz, looking up poets and books that Billy Collins referred to or that came up in the audience comments while he presented his broadcast. I discovered a blog called A Year of Being Here. The blogger, Phyllis Cole-Dai, posted a poem a day for three years. They are mindfulness poems. I went to the start of her blog and read several poems from January, 2013 and plan to return often with the promise that I will discover countless poems and poets I'm not familiar with.
I also returned to my reading of The Pillars of the Earth and finished the first chapter. The pace of this story is often breathtaking, the suspense riveting, the things that occur unnerving, and I'm looking forward to seeing how this story moves forward.
Here's a limerick by Stu:
It’s not nice to call someone obtuse.
But, when naming wild animals loose.
They knew a coyote from a bear,
And could tell a skunk from a hare.
But, did not know an elk from a moose.
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