Category Archives: poetry

book reviews, poetry

Book Review: Four Ways of Modern Poetry

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A good and pleasurable read, but ’twill not be put back on my shelves.

I continue to pull books from this or that shelf, looking for any that seem interesting but which I’m sure I won’t keep. Reading those should be a win-win situation. A bit of enjoyment and decluttering/dis-accumulation at the same time.  The one I chose a couple of weeks ago was an oldish one: Four Ways of Modern Poetry, edited by Nathan A. Scott.

Published by John Knox Press in 1965, I have the Chime Paperbacks edition. Original cost was $1.00, stamped right on the front page. It’s in pretty good condition for its age.

The book looks at four poets: Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, Dylan Thomas, and W.H. Auden. I’m sure I bought this primarily for Frost, but also secondarily for Thomas. Since I bought this, I have read a little of Stevens, and have liked what I read. I’m still unfamiliar with Auden.

The book, 92 pages, consists of four essays by four different men, each one covering one of the four poets. I found the essay on Steven, by Stanley Romaine Hopper, mostly incomprehensible. I plowed through it but didn’t enjoy it and doubt that I learned much about him. I have a large book of his poetry and will have to get back into that sometime soon.

The essay by Frost was by Paul Elmen. This might have been equally incomprehensible as the first except that I know more about Frost. Elmen’s point is the Frost was a dark poet, not the simple, pastoral New England poet he appears to be. Others have said the same thing. I haven’t decided yet. I enjoy the pretty pictures that Frost’s poems paint, and am happy not to look for darkness beneath the surface.

The Thomas essay was by Ralph J. Mills, Jr. I’ve read a fair amount about Thomas. In fact, on my reading table is A Dylan Thomas Reader, which I dip into from time to time when other books at hand don’t excite me. I also have a book of his letters, which I read half-way through. Thomas’s poetry I don’t really care for, but he is an interesting character. Mills did a good job on explaining Thomas’s place in modern poetry.

The essay on Auden was written by the editor, Scott. It was by far the best of the four. It made me want to read more of Auden’s work, and some critique of those works and some biographical pieces. Alas, I will have to get much further into retirement and to the point where I don’t want to write anything of my own before I do that.

It took me only six or seven sitting to get through this. I consider the time to have been well spent. I won’t recommend it, mainly because I suspect it would be difficult to find a 1965 paperback in whatever bookstore you go into. It’s probably available on-line, from ABE Books or wherever you go for out-of-print books. It is worth reading if modern poetry is to your liking. But for me, I won’t be re-reading it so it is not a keeper. Nope. It’s already on the sale/donation shelves. A good read, but off it goes.

 

book reviews, poetry

Book Review: Collected Lyrics of Edna St. Vincent Millay

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This thin, mass-market paperback was an okay read, but is not a keeper. I have another, more complete collection of her poems.

Almost all I know about poetry I learned by myself. A series of secondary school English teachers covered poetry every year, and I’m afraid I was a poor student of it. About all I learned was the names of the major poets, and a little of what era they were in.

One of those names was Edna St. Vincent Millay. I knew of her, but nothing about her.  That changed after I began studying poetry about twenty years ago. I read somewhere (probably Wikipedia) a short bio about her, and read a few of her poems in different anthologies.  Then I picked up a biography of her and read it, telling me something about the woman. Finally, in my library, on my poetry shelf in the storeroom, I found Collected Lyrics of Edna St. Vincent Millay. This little mass-market paperback belonged to my sister, for she signed it and put her homeroom down. it was published posthumously in 1959. This particular printing was from 1966.

Lots about poetry confuses me. What do they mean by “Lyrics”? They mean lyrical poems, I realize, but how do lyrical poems differ from other poems? I tried to figure that out some years ago and failed to grasp the difference. I do note, however, that this book contains none of Millay’s sonnets. So I reckon sonnets are not lyrical poems. I’m starting to think that lyrical poems are poems that don’t fit into a prescribed form—although I’m sure that’s not right.

No matter. The poems collected in this book run the full length of Millay’s poetic career, from Renascence in 1919 to Huntsman, What Quarry? in 1939 and scattered poems after that up to her death in 1950. She was quite a gal. I won’t go into her background. Let’s just say it’s well worth reading a biography about her.

As to the poems, I have a mixed reaction. I would for sure say she is not among my favorite poets. I had difficulty finding meaning in many of hers. Because of her background, one first attempts to read her poems as autobiographical. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. I prefer to assume any poet’s poems are not autobiographical. But so many of hers I just can’t figure out. To keep from glazing over as I read her poems, I read the book slowly, a few pages at a time, over almost a year. Maybe it was more than a year. In hindsight that may not have been the right decision.

I tried to read the poems carefully, not glossing over them. Many I read twice, having come to the end of one and thinking “What did I just read?” Alas, most of the time the second read made little difference. I still had little understanding of the poem.

So my two questions I try to answer in these reviews: Should you read this, and is the book a keeper? Reading poetry is a good thing; Millay is a major poet from the not too distant past; so yes, you should read her. Whether her lyrics taking in isolation from the rest of her work is another question. I think maybe a different of her books is in order.

As to keeping this, that’s a harder question. Or is it? So far, I’ve not sold any of my poetry books. But I have another book of Millay’s poems, one that is more complete than this one. I don’t know that I need two. So, off it goes. I’d return it to my sister but I’m sure she won’t want it. Nope, into the sale/giveaway pile it goes. Goodbye, Edna. See you in another book.

poetry, Writing

Two Changed Words Make a Big Difference

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Dateline Sunday 15 August 2021

I’m having a restful Sunday. Took a nap or two this afternoon. It’s evening now, and I may try to write a little this evening. Or maybe I’ll continue to work on old e-mails, deciding what to keep, what to discard, what to archive. For some reason I find that a restful occupation. Right now I’m going through e-mails from 2011.

But this blog post is about a small writing success story that happened late last week. I think it was on Friday, but it might have been Thursday. This involves poetry. Now, years ago I wrote poetry, but I transferred away from that and concentrated on prose for a long time, with many works under my belt. From time to time over the last ten years I would try my hand at poetry, but none came to me, either by inspiration or perspiration. I have ideas for poetry books, but no means to make them happen.

So Friday evening, I had a minor breakthrough, a two word breakthrough. I wish I could explain how this happened, what  inspired me to bring this poem to mind and to figure out those two word needed to replace two unproductive words. I’ve been reading in three books: Behind The Stories, a 2002 book about a couple of dozen Christian novelists; The Joyful Christian, a library book that is a compilation of a number of Lewis’s writings; and, on my phone, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Vol 3. I think my catalyst may have been in the letters book. Lewis probably wrote something to someone about some poetry that person had sent him. As a result, the problem poem came to mind. It’s a sonnet I wrote in 2002, my 18th sonnet. But as I said, I was never happy with the closing line. I had emended it several times, maybe improving it, but never feeling that it gave the required punch the sonnet needed.

Well, the words came to me while I was reading. I didn’t have my computer open, so I wrote the revised line on a sheet of paper by my reading chair, and said it over and over to myself. I went to bed saying it, mulling it over and over. It seemed good. I’m going to paste in the poem here. I would type it, but I don’t know html and poetry lines don’t come in right on this platform.

A snip from my Word file. Alas, I don’t like the way poems format on this platform. If the poem isn’t readable, click to enlarge.

 

I’m not going to explain it. Native Rhode Islanders will understand, both the place references and the object references.

I’m not saying poetry is back for me. My mind is still mainly on prose: stories, novels, articles, letters. But I’m glad for a small poetic break-though. I leave it to poetry critics to explicate that last line and judge its worthiness. Now, back to my prose.

miscellaneous, poetry, Robert Frost

The Woods Are Lovely, Dark and Deep

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The patch of land, cleared by the power co-op quickly being overgrown, makes he woods look not all that dark in this photo. The eye, in this case, sees more than the camera does.

People who know and love poetry might recognize the title of this post as coming from Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening”. Over the years I have come to like this poem much, but once upon a time I hated it.

I hated it because of how it was used by a string of English teachers, year after year, and how they insisted that this was a suicide poem. That may even include two favorite English teachers. If so, they did a good job except for this. I never could see suicide in the poem. The teachers said you had to look below the words on the surface and find the hidden meaning the poet was really saying. I couldn’t see it. To my schoolboy mind, the teachers ridiculed you if you couldn’t see it. Years later I wrote a poem about those experiences.

A critic I will never be.

What others “know” I seldom see.

Thought most did, I just never could

see death in that dark snowy wood.

Let others find some hidden meaning.

Such deep insights I won’t be gleaning.

But please, don’t take this as a stricture.

I just enjoy the pretty picture.

Not much of a poem. It has no hidden meaning. No metaphor or simile. The only poetical devices are rhyme, meter, and line breaks. Maybe a touch of word play.

A few days ago, I was outside our house in the street, just up the hill in front of the vacant lot next to me. We live in a lightly developed area; four houses on our street and twenty undeveloped lots, all forested. I looked down into the woods of that lot, and it was dark. It was a bright sunshiny day, but the leaf canopy of the oaks let no light in. The sun, beginning its western descent, was shining on the forest at the edge of the road, but the woods were dark.

I’ve never noticed that before, the incredible darkness of the woods on a sunny day. Maybe the leafy canopy is denser than normal this year. Yesterday I purposely went outside to see the woods (from the street) at noon. The high sun penetrated the canopy in a few places. Most of the wood seemed dark, but the few sunlit places would give someone in the woods a target to go to.

At different times during the day I went into the woods. Just one row of trees from the open area cleared by the power company, but the view was completely different. The darkness of the woods seemed deeper. My eyes adjusted to the reduced light (the sun now being behind my back and me in shade), so I could better see individual trees until tree after tree stacked together and you couldn’t see any further into the woods.

Just 15 feet—one row of trees—into the wood and it looks different, darker. Much to explore here, and learn about.

Why did people, English teachers especially, think “Snowy Wood” was a suicide poem? Primarily because of the last stanza, where Frost repeats “and miles to go before I sleep.” The first time this phrase is used, they say, the poet narrator means that night that he is looking at the woods. The second time he uses it, they say, he means sleep as death. His death is a long way off, and those promises he has to keep are burdensome. Thus, he wishes he could just go off into that wonderful, dark and deep snowy wood, die, and be released from his burden.

As I look at the dark and deep woods that surround our house, I have no such foreboding, no such longing. I have much to do in life. While I may be retired, every hour of the day is filled with meaningful, stimulating, sometimes physically exhausting things. Writing, Reading, Praying. Stock trading. Even decluttering and dis-accumulation. I’m so far from being ready to die that I don’t think of it, most of the time.

But I do think of it as I look at the world around me, and people close to me. A number of people in our adult Sunday school class are facing serious health issues. Death may not be on the doorstep but he’s certainly on the block, right around the corner. Wednesday we learned of the death of another high school classmate. That’s now around 80 or 90 out of a class of 725. I didn’t know this man in school, as life circumstances then prevented me from meeting many except for those in my classes, football, track, and band. And even some of them have faded from memory.

But, clearly, the older I get the more death closes in, just like the impenetrable woods.

To me, the woods represent opportunity, something to explore, something to master. not to tear it down, but to get to know it. I have the rest of a lifetime to do so, whatever God allows me to have. I hope I use the time well.

The woods are indeed lovely, dark and deep. But I do have promises to keep and, hopefully, miles to go before I sleep. It’s not about death but about life.

Bible study, Documenting America, poetry, self-publishing, Sharon Williams short stories, The Teachings, Writing

Writing Goals for 2021 – A Starting Point

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Dateline 3 January 2021

For the first time in many years, I start the new year with uncertainty as to what I want to accomplish in my writing. Perhaps this is a residual effect of the corona virus pandemic, which caused a general uncertainty in the world and made life difficult to plan. I didn’t get as much writing done in 2020 as I wanted to, not so much because of corona virus but because of being diverted to other things (health issue, de-cluttering work, letters transcription).

But, a writer who is publishing is running a business, which should have a business plan if it wants to be successful. So here is my plan. It’s a starting point. I will be thinking much about this over the early part of the year and may modify it based on further consideration.

  • These books have been waiting for the book that goes between them to be written. I’m finally back to working on it.

    Finish and publish The Teachings. A little over a week ago, I got back to serious work on this novel. As of today’s effort, I have 37,000 words in the first draft. If 80,000 is the minimum size of the book, I’m closing in on halfway done. But I don’t feel that the story is halfway done, so perhaps this will be a 90,000 word novel. Either way, at my current pace I could be done in mid-February, which means I might have the book ready to publish in April. For now, those are my goals.

  • Write and publish one Sharon Williams story. Believe it or not the next story in my series Sharon Williams Fonseca: Unconventional CIA Agent, is starting to roll around in my brain. This is happening unsolicited. I’m not trying to think about it, yet the story is developing. That may be a sign that I should write the story this year.
  • Write and publish one Documenting America volume. I’m planning for this to be Run-up To Revolution, covering 1761-1775, the documents that led to our rebelling against England. I did some reading for research in 2019 and a little more last year. I need to figure out where I was and see how quickly I could do this. Writing these volumes is always pleasurable, and I’m looking forward to this.
  • I know which Bible study I want to write and publish next, but it’s going to take some work. Not sure I’m quite ready to do that..

    Write and publish a Bible study. I’ve planned out what I want the next one to be: Entrusted To My Care: A Study of 1st and 2nd Timothy. I have a fair number of notes on this, have taught it twice, and think I could do this one with the least amount of effort among all those I’ve developed. Yet, it would still be a pretty significant effort. This would be later in the year.

  • Maintain a twice per week blogging schedule. The last two years have shown me I can do this. On occasion I may have to make a dummy post or even skip one, but for the most part I should be able to do this.
  • It’s been a long time since I wrote most of the poems in this, around 2005-6, I think.

    Write some poetry. The desire to write poetry again has become active, even if the words aren’t rolling around yet as they are for the short story. I know the poetry book I want to write. My question is: do I wait for inspiration to strike or do I apply some perspiration and just get on with the writing? That’s what I’ll be thinking about the next few weeks.

As I say, this is a start. For now I’m concentrating on my novel. Once I get that done, I’ll give this plan serious re-evaluation.

book reviews, letters, poetry

Book Review: Rainer Maria Rilke: Letters to a Young Poet

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This isn’t the volume I read, but I don’t have my camera right now to take a photo of it. Same book, different wrapper.

Some time ago, I picked up the book Rainer Maria Rilke: Letters To A Young Poet somewhere. When I picked up the book from my reading pile recently to read it, I found a receipt in it dated 9/21/2009 for $0.99 plus tax from the Goodwill store in Andover, Kansas. We used to stop at that store occasionally, so I assume that’s when I bought it. It’s been in my reading pile in my closet for a long time.

I bought it because I love reading letters, and I love poetry. What would be not to like? I don’t know much about Rilke, other than having heard his name in poetry/literature circles, and, after reading this, I still don’t know much about him. The first letter is dates February 17, 1903, when Rilke was just 27, so he appears to have gotten some notoriety early in his life as a writer and poet.

A younger man, Franz Xaver Kappus, also an erstwhile poet, had written to Rilke, apparently asking for advice and passing along some poems for Rilke to critique. Rilke wrote back, their correspondence being in German. He declined to provide the requested review of Kappus’ poems, instead talking about his life as a poet, and giving the young man advice of what he could expect.

As I read these letters, I didn’t come away with much advice as to writing poetry. It did give some insight into Rilke’s life. Although, it almost appears that Rilke was playing the role of the unreliable narrator. To read the letters, he was always sick, always moving around, and never able to work, even finding it difficult to sit and write letters. From these letters I got the impression that Rilke’s best and productive days as a writer were already behind him at age 27 to 34.

That wasn’t true, however. A quick study of his life shows that Rilke had a number of books published during the years these letters were written, books of both poetry and prose. It’s true he moved around a lot, as he sought places most conducive to his frail health and his writing. I think each of the ten letters in the book came from a different place.

I’m glad I bought the book and finally, after allowing it to sit for ten years, read it. However, except for the measure of enjoyment and distraction it gave me it wasn’t all that useful. Now I have a decision to make: does it go into my library or do I donate it to a thrift store?

In favor of keeping it, as I said at the outset, I love reading letters and I love poetry. I should keep it. I wouldn’t know where to place it on the shelves, in my collection of volumes of letters or in my poetry collection. It’s not poetry, so I suppose it would go under letters. The question, though, is will I ever read it again? Did I find enough value in it to ever take it back off the shelf and re-read it? I can’t predict the future, of course, so who knows what I might want to read in twenty years. I have enough un-read books in the house already that I won’t have a need to re-read anything. From that perspective only, it should go.

Then there’s the decluttering factor. As we have been getting ready for our Thanksgiving gathering this week, we have once again become acutely aware that we have way too much stuff. Things need to go. Wednesday I took a load to Helping Hands, our favorite thrift store. With that load taken, I see no dent in the amount of clutter.

So, I’m afraid this 123 page volume, slim as it is, will soon find its way back to another thrift store and there await rescue by someone else who likes either letters or poetry or both. May it give pleasure to someone again.

Bible study, C.S. Lewis, poetry

Late In The Day

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This morning, when I should have been writing a blog post, I worked on a financial spreadsheet. Now in my 11th month of retirement, knowing what our financial condition is at present, I had never made any projections into the future. This morning, in about an hour, I was able to build a nice spreadsheet to make those projections. It’s not done yet, but it’s close. I need to enhance the formatting, and maybe add another bell or whistle or two, but I’m pleased with the progress I made. It was long overdue.

Now it’s evening. I had a busy Monday with taking the wife to a doctor appointment, doing a couple of errands while she was busy. At home I changed out our modem, which was two generations old. I walked to the post office and mailed a copy of Acts Of Faith to a former pastor.

After that I read, finishing C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. I’ll be writing a book review of it soon. I did a little research for teaching AOF, and have somewhat relaxed in the evening. Through this I had no time for original writing. Yet this evening I anticipate some reading for research in a future book, or maybe in the Leader’s Guide for AOF.

I wanted to start another book, something closer to pleasure reading, since all my recent reading has been or still is in support of my current works-in-progress or future planned works. I also wanted to grab something off my reading pile, which is on a bookshelf in my closet. I went in there and found the perfect book: Letters To A Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke.

Readers of this blog will know I love reading letters (though I haven’t written about that for a while). I don’t know a lot about Rilke, so I’m looking forward to knowing more about him through his letters.

I guess, since I consider myself a poet of sorts, I can’t say this is completely a read for pleasure. I’ll see where this leads me. As always, I’ll report back with a review.

Bible study, C.S. Lewis, Church History Novels, Engineering, Health, poetry, reading, Writing

An Enjoyable Loss of Sleep

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Will this be my only poetry book, or will inspiration to write more ever return?

This morning I awoke at about 4:30 a.m., did a restroom break, went back to bed, and couldn’t sleep. This has happened before. Normally I go right back to sleep after being up in the night, but sometimes, only on the later in the night awakenings, I don’t fall asleep. At 5:30 I decided lying there with disjointed thoughts was silly and got up. Throwing on a long sleeve shirt, slipping my feet into my aging and almost done-for slippers, I took my mug of water and headed for the sun room to read.

No coffee, you ask? No, I don’t like to take coffee before I weigh and take my blood sugar, and I wasn’t ready for the latter. So I went to the sun room and started to read in Jack, a life of C.S. Lewis by George Sayer. I had loaned this book to a friend and asked for it back recently, as I wanted to read it again. I say “again” as I’m not 100 percent sure I read it before. I think I did, well over ten years ago, about the time our Life Group was studying The Screwtape Letters. I’ll know if I read it before if, in the last chapter, I find a certain scene there. If this is my second time through it, it’s quite fresh and enjoyable, given the time lapse since the first reading.

The windows in the sun room were still open, and it was cold. I regretted not pulling on jeans and my inside jacket. The temperature was to get down to 40 overnight, and I was sure it was that low. Outside, the air was stirring. Breezes came and went. The rustling in the adjacent wood was almost constant, though never strong. Occasionally it came through the open window before me. Why didn’t I shut the window? And the one to my side? Why didn’t I go back to the bedroom and get dressed more properly? For one, I didn’t want to risk waking Lynda. Also, I much enjoy being slightly cold. It was easier to pull a blanket over my legs and chest and enjoy the coolness.

I read with good concentration and made much progress. Shortly after 6:00 a.m., Lynda opened the door. We had a brief conversation. I got up, weighed, took my sugar, got dressed, got coffee, and went back to the sunroom and reading, while Lynda went back to bed for a while. I returned to my reading, but with a little less concentration. Thoughts of poetry began to take some brain space away from the words on the page. Oh, my comprehension was still fine. It’s just that I’d like to be able to write poetry again.

Poetry is probably an affectation for me, not something I should spend time on. When I wrote quite a bit of poetry over a decade ago, I enjoyed it. I don’t know whether I produced good poetry, but it was the type of poetry I like to read, so it was good for me. In my mind I’ve outlined six additional poetry books, and have listed their potential titles on the page. I know the order I’d like to write them in. Yet, I have no inspiration beyond that.

I’m not going to force it. I have too much else to write, both works-in-progress and planned, to devote time to poetry without inspiration. I like to say that poetry comes either by inspiration or perspiration, and probably requires both. I’m going to wait, however, and not apply the perspiration in hopes that the inspiration follows. I think the opposite order of things is better.

I need to get the Leader’s Guide for this done, but it’s progressing painfully slowly. More perspiration needed, I think.

So what will my day consist of, now that the sun has risen enough behind the dense cloud cover to show light through the trees outside The Dungeon windows? I hope to finish a chapter in the Leader’s Guide to Acts Of Faith. I made some progress on it last night. I hope to write a scene in “Tango Delta Foxtrot”, and get that to the halfway point. I have a few short-term stock trades on, a couple of which will come to a conclusion today; I’ll have to pay attention to them, though all looks good right now.

I have some engineering work to do. I went by the office of my old company yesterday and picked up two project for review. One, I’m fairly sure, is small and I can possibly complete in less than two hours. The other may be larger; I won’t know for sure till I get into it. Plus I have construction reports to review. I anticipate spending three or four hours today, and as much as needed tomorrow to complete these tasks. It will cut into my writing time, but the money is good, and it’s also good for me to keep my mind engaged in engineering work.

One other thing I may do today, time permitting. II might create the computer folder and files for my next book. Tentatively titled The Sayings, it is book 3 in my Church History novels series. I plan on starting it next month, but it, too, is taking up gray cells. I need to get a few things on “paper” so that I don’t lose them. Plot threads are coming to mind. Specific scenes are coming to mind as I read for research. I’m not sure I’ll do this, but perhaps it’s better to get it done and see if I can free up that brain power for the real tasks at hand.

So, it’s going to be a full day for sure. Some exercise would be good as well. I would say that this is a day when I have truly “awakened the dawn”.

book reviews, poetry

Book Review: Savage Beauty

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This 2001 biography, 51 years after the poet’s death, took almost 30 years of research.

Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford is an authorized biography of the poet. I must admit to not having read a lot of her poetry. What I have read I find to be excellent, though typically touching on things that don’t interest me. Still, that’s like reading 5 percent of someone’s works and saying they don’t interest you. Maybe less than 5 percent. It’s not a fair assessment.

Millay was an enigma. Raised in a sheltered lifestyle in small-town Maine, she eventually adopted a Bohemian lifestyle in Greenwich Village. She had a number of lovers, including openly after she married.

Somehow, her poetry spoke to young women, maybe to older women as well. It was mostly formal poetry, rhyming and in meter. Here subjects included women’s liberation and sexual freedom. I was surprised to find three different books of her collected poems in my library. One was my sister’s, left at our dad’s house and moved to mine with all the books. One I remember picking up second hand. The third I don’t remember acquiring at all. I don’t imagine I’ll keep all three, but I will for sure read in some.

Back to Savage Beauty. The title comes from a line in one of her poems.

I was waylaid by Beauty. Who will walk

Between me and the crying of the frogs?

Oh, savage Beauty, suffer me to pass,

That am a timid woman, on her way

From one house to another!

That’s not supposed to be double-spaced, but I can’t figure out how to get it single-spaced and put the line breaks in. Ah me, I must learn more about Word Press and html.

This photo was on the cover of her first book.

The most disappointing thing to me about Savage Beauty was that, while the series of events that changed Millay from naïve schoolgirl to promiscuous woman were given, no why was suggested. Nor was any negative reaction from family mentioned. She graduated Vassar College at age 25, having started later than most young people, and moved straight to the Greenwich Village area of New York City. She supported herself by her poetry. She also wrote, produced, and acted in some off-Broadway plays. She found that men were instantly attracted to her and she could have any of them she wanted. Before long, she was having them. She fended off several marriage proposals. She made an extended trip to Europe, all the while maintaining the loose lifestyle.

She eventually married a man with some money. They bought an estate in the New York Berkshires and sort of lived there. I say “sort of” because they seemed to be gone much. With each book Edna went on a long promotion and reading tour. It’s said her voice was mesmerizing, and audiences filled every hall she read in. Besides the tours were frequent stays in New York City, trips abroad, and occasional summers at an island off the coast of Maine.

Millay drank and smoked to excess, and began having health problems from it. An auto accident, where she was thrown out of the car, caused her much pain and led to her addiction to morphine and other drugs. In 1950, at age 58, she met her death at her home. The description Milford gives in the book makes it possible it was either a tragic accident or suicide. Millay was alone when she apparently fell down a long flight of stairs and wasn’t found for twelve hours or more.

All the tragedy of her life, all her lifestyle, was unknown to me before reading this. I knew only that she was a renowned poet of the 20th Century. It’s good to know about her life, though I don’t know that I feel particularly enlightened. I think saddened is the reaction I take away from the biography.

So the question now is: Does Savage Beauty stay on my bookshelves? I can at a minimum move it from my reading style to a permanent shelf. But will I ever read it again? I think it unlikely I’ll re-read it, so it should go for donation to a thrift store. But, if I paid full price for it, I hate to do that. What to do, what to do? I think, in the spirit of de-cluttering, out it goes.

Bible study, Documenting America, goals, poetry, reading, Short Stories, Writing

September 2019 Goals

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I used to do goals posts regularly. I’ll do it this month and see what comes of it.

One thing I’ve been doing in the evening is going through old posts on this blog and adding categories to them. My son helped me set up my website in June 2011. Part of that was creating this blog. I already had a blog over at BlogSpot, titled “An Arrow Through the Air”. He did the work of porting all those posts over to this blog.

I intended, at first, to run both blogs. This one would be my writing blog; that one would be for more personal stuff. I did that for a while, but soon saw the pressures of life wouldn’t allow me to do both. So, I abandoned AATTA and concentrated on this blog. Eventually I renamed this one to be An Arrow Through The Air. The old one still exists. Every now and then I make a minor post there just to keep the account open.

A few months back I went to the back pages of this blog, I forget why. I noticed that all those posts from the old blog came over but none of them had categories. The all show up as “Uncategorized”. That’s not a major problem, but…oh, wait, I remember now. I was trying to find a post I did back in 2008 on a certain subject, went to that category, and didn’t find the post. That’s when I learned none of the categories had stayed with the posts as they ported over.

So, slowly, as I have a night in front of the TV where I can’t really do anything else, I’ve been going back through the old posts and adding categories. It’s actually a tedious job but I feel that it needs to be done. As of last night I had completed all the posts for 2008. Looks like I have two and a half years still to go.

One thing I noticed was that in 2008 I made a monthly post about my goals for the month—writing goals mostly—and then an end-of-the-month post showing how well I’d done. That was almost a journal, of sorts. It made me think I ought to do that occasionally. So, here’s my first goals post in a long time. Perhaps on Sept. 30 I’ll come back and make a post of how I did.

  1. Blog on a regular Monday and Friday schedule. I’ve done fairly well at that this year, and I’d like to continue it.
  2. Complete publishing tasks for and publish all versions of  Documenting America: Making The Constitution. I’m close. The covers are the big holdup.
  3. Complete publishing tasks for and publish all versions of  Acts Of Faith: Examples from the Great Cloud of Witnesses. I’m almost through with edits, but I can see this happening.
  4. Write a short story in my Sharon Williams Fonseca series. I have a sheet or two of notes of what I’m going to do next, if I can only find them.
  5. Critique 2-3 poems at the Absolute Write Forums. I’d like to keep my foot in poetry somehow. Maybe this is the way.
  6. Attend writers groups on the 11th and the 18th.
  7. Complete reading three items and begin two or three more. As of this morning I’m halfway through two books (each around 260-280 pages) and a third through a 60 page article. I should easily finish all these with no problem. I don’t know what I want to read next, but I’ll start searching my stacks before lone.
  8. Prepare my first newsletter for release about Oct 15. And figure out how to make it happen.

That’s enough, I think. See you all on the 30th with a report.