Yesterday we went shopping for
our big (and we hope) final run of groceries for the holiday season and I am
very proud to say that I only did one tiny indulgence in Costco, buying one
book for myself. What was it? Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” which is a book
I have been wanting to read for a long time.
Last night I read the
introduction and then his preface and found myself dubious about his greatness.
Then I mulled it over some more and realized a few things that sort of eased my
anxiety a little bit about this fellow who has been lauded as perhaps America’s
greatest poet. While he was not a man of
his time in the sense of being in step with the norms of the day he still had a
very egotistically American outlook. They are the greatest poets on earth, they
are the most innovative, creative, accepting, etc. I can hear so much current American
jargon in his extremely long and quite boring preface!
Today I will take a dive into the
actual poetry and try to keep an open mind since the poems are in fact the whole
point of the book. But when I lay the book aside last night I pondered my
non-love affair with poetry and wondered if poetry is an acquired taste or if it
comes naturally to some people. Is poetry the pinnacle of fine reading, this
prose lover asks? I certainly believe that really good poetry is very difficult
to write whereas prose seems to me to be more streaming.
I am beginning to appreciate
poetry despite struggling with memorizing but the point really is to enjoy the content
of the poem and then ponder about what the poet meant to convey. Despite my
best efforts to keep an open mind I can already predict that I will be
unchanged in one year with respect to who my favorite poet will remain.
Emily
Dickinson, I understand your poetry and will always love your tempo.
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