I’m sitting here on my bed with one of my cats and a light wildfire haze outside making it cloudy. To my left is a small shelf where I keep the books of my favorite authors - the Transcendentalists, plus Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, who are usually lumped in with the Transcendentalists, and who are also my favorite poets. She and Thoreau are my main literature people. So I’m reading right now something I found online while doing an Emily search last week because I kind of realized after months of working on an almost 600-page book that it wasn’t really resonating with me. I had read it before long ago and wanted to re-read it after all these years back in November. But I was struggling. Not that I wasn’t interested in the information in the book. I am. But I realized after I put the book aside this isn’t really what I need in my life right now, and that’s probably why I’m struggling to get through it and why it’s so slow-going. I don’t know if I’ll get back to it. I still have it out in my pile of books and notebooks nearby. But anyway, I did an Emily search to find something else to read. Maybe an interesting article or something. So I found a study/analysis on 5 of her poems. I’ve read various analyses before over the years. They are always different. I was discussing this with someone on Twitter yesterday. How these analyses are always different. And really, you can take all of them with a grain of salt. Like anything in literature studies. Now I’m no expert. I dropped out of college after a year. But I like what I like; and I’ve always liked to learn, so it’s kind of a hobby of mine to read and study. I take notes on what I read and love finding study guides and such to go along with what I’m reading if it happens to be something literature. I decided to take on this study guide and work through it. It’s 20 pages long. Back to what I said about taking all these analyses with a grain of salt. Everyone has their own interpretations of various works of literature because we are all individuals and get different things from novels, essays, and poetry. Much of it we can only surmise what the author meant or was getting at. If you look at the Emily Dickinson Museum’s Instagram, they post various of her poems each day and ask the readers what they think the poem means. It’s pretty much up to you to figure it all out. In high school and college you are taught what your teacher thinks. On top of all this you learn about various writing techniques they use such as similes, metaphors, foreshadowing… Now do you think the authors actually wrote what they wrote thinking as they wrote that I’m going to put in a dose of simile here or some foreshadowing there?? Again, I’m just a college drop-out, but I think not. I think these authors and poets sat down to write what they wrote and just wrote it!! It came out the way it did til they got it the way they wanted it. How many times did Walt Whitman write “Leaves of Grass”?? Nine I think?? Which no doubt is why that was his only book of poetry lol. It’s about all he wrote. There is “Specimen Days,” but… Thoreau took much of “Walden” from his journals. (And he didn’t write “Walden” while staying at the pond. He wrote “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers” there.) Poems get many rewrites til they sound the way the poet wants them to. But I don’t think any of these writers set out to specifically use any of these tools and techniques as they wrote. So why learn it?? What is the importance?? You can kind of apply the same thought to classical music being only for snoots when anyone can listen and enjoy really. You don’t need to know anything special to enjoy it. You don’t have to be rich. All you need is a youtube or CD player or whatever you want to listen to it on. I’m not largely into classical but enjoy a little because I took piano lessons for seven years and played a lot of classical pieces in my lesson books and some of it I do like. And it’s fun to play!! I’m far from being rich and I hope I’m not snooty. But you listen because you like it. That’s all. Remember the guy in “The Shawshank Redemption” playing the Mozart record to the whole prison?? Classical is supposed to be the best of the best music-wise, I suppose, but anyone can listen to it. I concluded my little talk with the guy on Twitter telling him that was today’s lit lecture. I supposed it did end up being a lecture lol. And is what gave me the idea to write a bit more at length about it here. You may want to check out some Emily poetry or Whitman poetry or Emerson or Thoreau essays - those are my choice lit readings. I’m not totally well-versed in fiction as I prefer non-fiction, but go ahead and delve into any author of your choice or musician for that matter. Study as you wish and become your own expert. Learning is free and the only student loans you need make are to your local library. Find some good stuff this summer and enjoy with a hot cup of tea!! Happy reading!! (Or listening. Or both!!)
Comments
No posts