One of the really nice things about Robert Browning - besides the pretty refreshing lack of didacticism and the feminist dramatic monologues and weirdly colloquial language and the crazy love letters to EBB - the really nice thing is that he lived with his parents until he was in his mid 30's, and didn't really start writing the poetry he'd become famous for until even later. This seems somehow a good thing to know, an important bit of information to remember when thinking about the awfully endless list of people who seem to burn out at a relatively young age and then spend the next several years or decades static, rehashing.
Also, I suppose I am a sucker for Robert Browning's late-bloomerness/underdog appeal in sort of the same way some people are for celebrity high school yearbook pictures in entertainment magazines. Meaning: it is maybe comforting to know that at some point these individuals were ordinary.
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Sunday, November 13, 2005
The Lady Of Shallot
How has it come to this? Sitting here with very little to say for myself other than trying to articulate some vague feeling that after awhile reading so much Tennyson and Gerard Manley Hopkins through the internet begins to seem the same as reading too much of them, even with nice lines like:
But where I say Hours I mean years, mean life
Don't get me wrong. It's not that I dislike gloomy poetry - in fact for several teenaged years it was my very favorite genre! But lately reading bucketfuls of poems laved with doubt and anxiety and other dangeroud things is starting to get a bit draining. Or maybe it's just easy to tell myself this, because I'm already feeling sort of gloomy as it is. (When in doubt, blame the Victorians!) Last week I heard a radio segment about a new book on Abraham Lincoln's melancholy, and whether or not the book is very well founded, the auther made an interesting comment about how there was once a time when sadness was an acceptable quality in a leader/public figure. I've been thinking about this a lot.
Speaking of being gloomy, I have found a pretty good way of cheering myself up, which is simply by taking a long, hard look at this:
Considering that this is from the 1904 World's Fair, it seems sadly unlikely that Jerry can be reached for questioning, which is too bad, because I'd really like to know about the details of this postcard - do you think ferris wheel rides were just longer back then?
But where I say Hours I mean years, mean life
Don't get me wrong. It's not that I dislike gloomy poetry - in fact for several teenaged years it was my very favorite genre! But lately reading bucketfuls of poems laved with doubt and anxiety and other dangeroud things is starting to get a bit draining. Or maybe it's just easy to tell myself this, because I'm already feeling sort of gloomy as it is. (When in doubt, blame the Victorians!) Last week I heard a radio segment about a new book on Abraham Lincoln's melancholy, and whether or not the book is very well founded, the auther made an interesting comment about how there was once a time when sadness was an acceptable quality in a leader/public figure. I've been thinking about this a lot.
Speaking of being gloomy, I have found a pretty good way of cheering myself up, which is simply by taking a long, hard look at this:
Considering that this is from the 1904 World's Fair, it seems sadly unlikely that Jerry can be reached for questioning, which is too bad, because I'd really like to know about the details of this postcard - do you think ferris wheel rides were just longer back then?
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