I was reading this poem the other day...

I've spent the last several months reading; much of what I read was poetry. Today as I sat on my parents' front porch and listened to my brother review for his AP literature test, I realized two things: 1) I had read a lot of poetry and 2) it is not nearly enough.

In the fall I took an Eliot and Auden seminar during which, as the course title indicates, I read most of Eliot's poetic works and a scattering of Auden's (who was, to be fair, much more prolific than Eliot). As the sweet summer faded and dimmed into the dark November and as each Wednesday evening sunset (which I could see if optimally situated near the window in the overcrowded classroom) took place earlier and earlier during class, my Romanian teacher folded his arms and shrugged bestowing a "pretty good" on anxious, eager to please presentations. The melancholy of modernism is suited to an evening autumn class, because when Eliot suddenly glimmers with hope, it is all the more beautiful, and when Auden turns a phrase hearts beat faster out of the gloom.

This evening, glancing over the shoulder of my little brother, I saw in the table of contents of his poetry book "Musee de Beaux Arts" by Auden. If you've not read it check it out:

 http://english.emory.edu/classes/paintings&poems/auden.html

This poem does several things excellently: it draws together two different art forms (poetry and painting) and through that union expresses something profound about life--that suffering does not happen in an arena; but instead is experienced in the periphery of everyone else's life. This is profound of course for people who experience deep and dark suffering that other people not only fail to notice, but even those who do notice, fail to sufficiently empathize. It is also true for the graduate student, whose sufferings are of the academic sort: full of deadlines, word counts, caffeine, and skimming. When the academic raises her head out of the sand expecting a pat on the back and a knowing "well done!" from the outside world, she instead sees that the world of church socials and doctor's appointments has gone on without her; friends receive promotions, brothers grow up, sisters prepare to get married, dogs get old, all without caring to hold their breath over whether or not a thesis had been successfully argued. The perspective of suffering is undeniably personal.

Yesterday skimming through an online collection of love poetry on my way to the sonnets, I stumbled again across an Auden poem that darkly tinged my light and happy wedding bells attitude. This one I will insert so that you have no excuse not to read it:

As I walked out one Evening by WH Auden

As I walked out one evening,       

 Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
        Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river    

    I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
        "Love has no ending.

"I'll love you, dear, I'll love you

        Till China and Africa meet
And the river jumps over the mountain
        And the salmon sing in the street.

"I'll love you till the ocean
        Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
        Like geese about the sky.

"The years shall run like rabbits
        For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages
        And the first love of the world."

But all the clocks in the city
        Began to whirr and chime:
"O let not Time deceive you,
        You cannot conquer Time.

"In the burrows of the Nightmare
        Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
        And coughs when you would kiss.

"In headaches and in worry
        Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
        To-morrow or to-day.

"Into many a green valley
        Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
        And the diver's brilliant bow.

"O plunge your hands in water,
        Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
        And wonder what you've missed.

"The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
        The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
        A lane to the land of the dead.

"Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
        And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer
        And Jill goes down on her back.

"O look, look in the mirror,
        O look in your distress;
Life remains a blessing
        Although you cannot bless.

"O stand, stand at the window
        As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
        With your crooked heart."

It was late, late in the evening,
        The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming
        And the deep river ran on.

I'm disinclined to offer much commentary on the poem because the poem should be personal and lead you into an introspective journey. For me, with my sister's nuptials quickly approaching and my own not far away, the poem contrasts the idealism of young love with the realistic ugliness and inevitable progression of life. Love may start as a simple "first love of the world," but as life progresses we each in the end must learn to "love [our] crooked neighbour,/with [our] crooked heart:" flawed humans imperfectly loving each other. However, despite Auden's "tears" and "distress" the clocks in his poem remind us that "life remains a blessing/ Although you cannot bless." The blessing comes from outside ourselves--although our efforts towards love are crooked and we are subject to the decay of time and the distopia of aging, some good yet remains which we cannot destroy. It is not a warm and fuzzy poem, I'll admit, to have in my mind with a wedding weekend approaching, but it provides a healthy perspective and balance to the saccharine platitudes that sprout like weeds around weddings. 

This past winter I was enrolled in a Renaissance lyric class which filled me to the brim with sonnet sequences. In this exploration I learned a lot about the universal experience of love. The Petrarchan sonnet sequence typically must involve a despised lover and his cruel, beautiful, and unobtainable beloved. I came to see that there is little difference in spirit and argumentative success between Billy Joel's "only the good die young" and Marvell's "To his coy mistress." I also saw that the cruel, blood thirsty mistress of Spenser’s Amoretti shares many attributes with Alice Cooper's muse for "Poison" and with Bon Jovi's lady who "Give[s] love a bad name." Although many depictions of love in the Renaissance are deliberately unhealthy (see Shakespeare's dark lady sonnets) there were a handful of beautiful poetic explorations of what love could be, but often after the poet has experienced the pain of despised love:

SONNET. LXVII.

LYKE as a huntsman after weary chace,

  Seeing the game from him escapt away:

  sits downe to rest him in some shady place,

  with panting hounds beguiled of their pray.

So after long pursuit and vaine assay,

  when I all weary had the chace forsooke,

  the gentle deare returnd the selfe-same way,

  thinking to quench her thirst at the next brooke.

There she beholding me with mylder looke,

  sought not to fly, but fearelesse still did bide:

  till I in hand her yet halfe trembling tooke,

  and with her owne goodwill hir fyrmely tyde.

Strange thing me seemd to see a beast so wyld,

  so goodly wonne with her owne will beguyld.

Spenser’s sonnet follows from a common Petrarchan conceit: a hunt. Often in other poems, most hunts end in the poet realizing the deer is unobtainable: either set apart for chastity or intended for a better man than he. Spenser's courtship takes a turn at this point in the sequence and heads towards betrothal and marriage. The culminating ode to his sequence is an Epithalamion, a marriage song celebrating his marriage to Elizabeth Boyle. His recorded poetic journey of love traces the highs and lows of love: highly contrived, perhaps but nonetheless a poetic justification for a bumpy road to love.

These, these and many more poems have been on my mind; they catch my mental ear in a casual sentiment expressed at dinner time over a glass of wine or in a late night chat with a too quickly growing up brother and a wise father. As an English grad student who is always trying to resist the ivory tower of academics, I find the way poetry sifts into life, casting profound shadows on trivial moments and stray thoughts a relief. Art has a place in the real world.