I guess this is it, isn't it? Our group projects have been presented, our paper topics discussed, and our blogs churned out. We've uncovered epiphanies spanning from 'The Four Quartets' by T.S. Eliot to 'Teaching a Stone to Talk' by Annie Dillard to 'Hamlet' by Sir William Shakespeare. We have immersed ourselves in a heightened sense of being; we have been in it, on the outside, around, through, and far in between. Now, we are moving forward into the unknown, the culmination of this class leading to the beginning of another life ... in our end is always, most certainly, our beginning.
I entered the class with little expectation; I only knew I would be at the hands of one of the most delicious minds at Montana State University (Dr. Michael Sexson) and I was thankful for the opportunity. The last class I had to which I was completely and totally attached was my British Literature Class taught by Kimberly Myers, and now I find myself on the verge of walking away from another class to which I have an attachment. I'm attached to these minds I've shared the space with, I'm attached to the ideas we have been kicking around for the semester, and it makes me melancholy that I will not have the opportunity to meet with this group every week. I know I wrote my final paper on the idea of light epiphanies rising out of melancholy experiences, but I can't help but feel tormented by moving on. Still, I know I have to!
I hope each and every person in the class was able to take away the same things I was able to, and I hope everyone has the chance to appreciate what Dr. Sexson has given us. He has given us new breath, a new way to view the world, and helpful tools which will help us when we feel we are incapable of surviving. I just want to extend a thank you to Dr. Sexson for reaching me in a way that very few Professors have during my six-year stint as an English major. Your passion for literature and for awakening the minds of your students has been an inspiration, a comfort, and also a huge push forward, and I thank you deeply for that. I have been absent at times this semester, both physically and mentally, but I think that is the curse of all the graduating seniors who are spending a lot of time thinking about the future and not so much time thinking about their present lives, something Lisa Meyer explored heavily in her final paper. I'm just thrilled to know that I have a future, and a college undergraduate degree will only push me further into the world and help me do things I had almost given up on doing.
I wouldn't trade the ups and downs and 'back and forths' of this journey for anything. I believe all of my trials, successes, and failures have led me to this moment, at this keyboard, writing these words, and at the end of the day I don't think I would change anything. I've always heard that regret is a wasted emotion, so I am going to let go of regret and only think about what is happening today and what is possible in the future, because that's all I have control over now. I have met some of the most incredible people and been part very special, sacred moments I will always carry with me. Life is full of moments, as we've been learning this semester, and how one deals with and cultivates these moments is part of the fun of living! So, go out and LIVE, English Majors!! I wish you all luck in your pursuits and know, from personal experience, that you are all capable of doing the most amazing things. Like Lester Bangs said in 'Almost Famous', 'You'll meet them all again on your long journey to the middle'. I hope I do. I really hope I do. :)
Thank you, thank you ... a thousand times, thank you, Dr. Michael Sexson. I adore you.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Presentations, Round II
This week, I read a Calvin and Hobbes quote that reminded me of my career as an English major:
CALVIN: You can't just turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood.
HOBBES: What mood is that?
CALVIN: Last-minute panic.
This seems to be how I have been feeling as the semester has been winding down! Rather than being 100% productive during the semester to lessen the amount of strain at the end of the semester, I always end up procrastinating and putting things off until I am absolutely frazzled and in a panic.
Still, I feel as though everything is falling into place, a sense only heightened by the presentations I saw today!! I know I have used the word 'brilliant' about three thousand times in my blog this semester, but I am going to use it again. WHAT A BRILLIANT GROUP OF PEOPLE WE HAVE!!!
I found the first groups presentation to be incredibly thoughtful and insightful. I never would have thought to pick out specific parts of blogs to create a story line, but it worked so well! And I found myself sitting there thinking it could be published somewhere; all the ramblings and inner workings of the Capstone Class of 2010. I know I have been blogging about how much I have grown this semester and how much the readings and insights have meant to me, but it really didn't quite hit home until this presentation. Hearing words from each and every blog made me realize EVERYONE has grown this semester, and everyone has been just as impacted in some way or another by the words we have been reading and the things Dr. Sexson has been teaching us. What a beautiful way to present!! The hands were a very nice touch... I tried to pick my own hand out but had some trouble... I just know it was one of the 'Blue' ones. I really liked that they used hands at the bottom of the tree for roots, kind of circling things back in with the idea that 'in our end is our beginning' and from death and decay emerges life! Beautiful, beautiful... and even more touching because it was read by our peers, fellow students. I really enjoyed it.
The second presentation was HILARIOUS! I'm so happy someone referenced Tai's hope that he will have cocaine and Popeye's chicken at his funeral. Good grief, Tai! The brick was absolutely perfect and I don't think anyone could have made a better head dress if they tried. I love that they used bits from the books we've read but incorporated our own Super Senior statuses and our impending graduation into the presentation. This entire presentation was very appropriate considering we are all shedding a past life and moving forward to something new, scary, and foreign. I know now I'm not alone in this and grateful to have these people by my side to tell me that they're all experiencing the same kinds of things I am experiencing!!
I loved the piece from the performances at the Bacchus! I was there in the background as one of the shadow figures behind the wall! Ben is pretty amazing with that camera, isn't he? Everyone did such a nice job! I don't believe I have been this excited about the 'happenings' of a class in a long time. I really enjoy the work we've done!
'All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.' -Shakespeare
WELL DONE, EVERYONE!!!
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Ponderings...
I have noticed in the past month or so I have been bombarded with the SAME question...
WHAT'S NEXT?
I am finally a graduating senior! Six years have been spent hopping from University to University, hoping I will find some sort of path to follow. Back then, I was sick of people asking me what I was going to do with my life and where I was going to go. Well, now that I've come to the culmination of yet another chapter, I am being asked the very same questions.
What am I going to do?
Where am I going to go?
Do I have any passions driving me in a certain direction?
Am I glad to finally be moving away from Bozeman?
Sometimes I feel like I can't ever answer these questions. I can only say what I hope to do and where I hope to go, and see if I can put together the necessary components to make it happen. All of these questions have made me think about CapStone and everything we have discussed this semester. We've discussed where we've been, what we think, what we know, what we do not know, and the fears we all have about moving forward.
As I give my answers to people asking about my future plans, I find myself asking the very same thing.
What really IS next? Where am I going to go? What does a person do when the thing that has defined them for so long comes to an end and they have to find something else to define them? Once again, I am comforted by the words of Roethke, repeating to myself that 'I learn by going where I have to go' because I MUST. I'm comforted by words of Eliot, knowing that in my beginning is my end, and everything moves in waves and patterns. I'm comforted by things I have learned in this class and I know will take with me no matter where I go or where I end up.
This class has taught me a lot about opening up my mind to more possibilities than I ever imagined and also made me reflect and realize what is important to me. The class has helped me make the big decision of where to go next and has introduced me to some very intoxicating young minds.
For these things, I am grateful. For these things, I am happy.
WHAT'S NEXT?
I am finally a graduating senior! Six years have been spent hopping from University to University, hoping I will find some sort of path to follow. Back then, I was sick of people asking me what I was going to do with my life and where I was going to go. Well, now that I've come to the culmination of yet another chapter, I am being asked the very same questions.
What am I going to do?
Where am I going to go?
Do I have any passions driving me in a certain direction?
Am I glad to finally be moving away from Bozeman?
Sometimes I feel like I can't ever answer these questions. I can only say what I hope to do and where I hope to go, and see if I can put together the necessary components to make it happen. All of these questions have made me think about CapStone and everything we have discussed this semester. We've discussed where we've been, what we think, what we know, what we do not know, and the fears we all have about moving forward.
As I give my answers to people asking about my future plans, I find myself asking the very same thing.
What really IS next? Where am I going to go? What does a person do when the thing that has defined them for so long comes to an end and they have to find something else to define them? Once again, I am comforted by the words of Roethke, repeating to myself that 'I learn by going where I have to go' because I MUST. I'm comforted by words of Eliot, knowing that in my beginning is my end, and everything moves in waves and patterns. I'm comforted by things I have learned in this class and I know will take with me no matter where I go or where I end up.
This class has taught me a lot about opening up my mind to more possibilities than I ever imagined and also made me reflect and realize what is important to me. The class has helped me make the big decision of where to go next and has introduced me to some very intoxicating young minds.
For these things, I am grateful. For these things, I am happy.
Presentations - Round I
Reflecting on the first round of presentations is a bit difficult because it feels like it didn't even happen! Everything went by so fast! First, I have to say, both presentations were impressive, both funny and touching on elements of the work we have been delving in to this semester. Let me just say a few things about Group I before I get to the group I presented with:
Group I's play was epecially funny! I really enjoyed how they took Shakespearean characters and gave them a modern day spin. To be honest, I missed some parts of the skit totally because I was laughing so hard. I especially enjoyed the 'Inspiration/Poison' bottle, Adam's at the DUDE, Mick as the super-freakish 'I'm just that great' guy, and Pat's mullet. Everyone did an excellent job of portraying their characters! I really liked how I was able to draw connections between what they were saying and the work we have done this semester. My roommate, Victoria, does an especially funny mock New Jersey accent, and I think she should have used it when she assumed the role as Hamlet's mother. Other than that, a very funny and engaging skit!
Next...my group. What can I say about my group? I am so impressed and inspired by everyone in my group and feel very privileged to have had the chance to work with some of these amazing people. Honestly, when we were assigned these groups, I was a bit intimidated ... I mean, I was put in a group with Kari, Sam, Tai, Doug, Amy, AND Taylor... if that's not daunting, I don't know what is! I was expecting to be overwhelmed with their abilities, and believe me, I have been. But I have also been overwhelmed with gratitude for these people; every single one of them is absolutely brilliant and so unique. It was really a wonder just to watch them give their input for these performances. Usually, group presentations are a little uncomfortable because no one really knows anyone else and not everyone can meet at the same time and things get stressful, but I never felt this way with my group! They were all very easy and fun to work with and I just felt like I was in the presence of greatness the entire time!
Our presentation went far better than I think any of us expected! It just came together very nicely and I felt we connected with at least a few people in the audience. At first, some of what we were trying to do was over my head, but as we practiced and I watched the performance play out, everything started to make more sense. There are a few things I liked especially about the presentation:
1. Tai's violin playing. Is there ANYTHING that kid can't do?! I'm very glad I finally got to hear him play and I think the music was a beautiful addition to the presentation. It wouldn't have been the same without it.
2. The petite mandolins! Well done, Amy! They were perfect for the presentation and so tasty.
3. The booklets we passed out at the beginning of the performance were all made by Sam and beautifully done. I loved the seal on each one; very elegant.
4. The interplay between Douglas and Kari was hilarious. Especially when Kari turned to Doug and said, "Douglas...*pause for effect*... it's time for communion. Please have a seat.' I couldn't help but giggle... so perfect! I love Kari!
5. Taylor and I were actually reading Police reports for our part of the 'murmuring', and it turned out very well! I think we incorporated the 'ordinary and mundane' and the 'divine' into our presentation in surprising but fitting ways.
All in all, the first round of performances were very fun! It's not every day a person gets the privilege of being around so many great minds, and I am a bit sad the class is ending because I will not get to see these people every week.
Of course, the class would be nothing without Dr. Sexson. Brilliant and inspiring.
Group I's play was epecially funny! I really enjoyed how they took Shakespearean characters and gave them a modern day spin. To be honest, I missed some parts of the skit totally because I was laughing so hard. I especially enjoyed the 'Inspiration/Poison' bottle, Adam's at the DUDE, Mick as the super-freakish 'I'm just that great' guy, and Pat's mullet. Everyone did an excellent job of portraying their characters! I really liked how I was able to draw connections between what they were saying and the work we have done this semester. My roommate, Victoria, does an especially funny mock New Jersey accent, and I think she should have used it when she assumed the role as Hamlet's mother. Other than that, a very funny and engaging skit!
Next...my group. What can I say about my group? I am so impressed and inspired by everyone in my group and feel very privileged to have had the chance to work with some of these amazing people. Honestly, when we were assigned these groups, I was a bit intimidated ... I mean, I was put in a group with Kari, Sam, Tai, Doug, Amy, AND Taylor... if that's not daunting, I don't know what is! I was expecting to be overwhelmed with their abilities, and believe me, I have been. But I have also been overwhelmed with gratitude for these people; every single one of them is absolutely brilliant and so unique. It was really a wonder just to watch them give their input for these performances. Usually, group presentations are a little uncomfortable because no one really knows anyone else and not everyone can meet at the same time and things get stressful, but I never felt this way with my group! They were all very easy and fun to work with and I just felt like I was in the presence of greatness the entire time!
Our presentation went far better than I think any of us expected! It just came together very nicely and I felt we connected with at least a few people in the audience. At first, some of what we were trying to do was over my head, but as we practiced and I watched the performance play out, everything started to make more sense. There are a few things I liked especially about the presentation:
1. Tai's violin playing. Is there ANYTHING that kid can't do?! I'm very glad I finally got to hear him play and I think the music was a beautiful addition to the presentation. It wouldn't have been the same without it.
2. The petite mandolins! Well done, Amy! They were perfect for the presentation and so tasty.
3. The booklets we passed out at the beginning of the performance were all made by Sam and beautifully done. I loved the seal on each one; very elegant.
4. The interplay between Douglas and Kari was hilarious. Especially when Kari turned to Doug and said, "Douglas...*pause for effect*... it's time for communion. Please have a seat.' I couldn't help but giggle... so perfect! I love Kari!
5. Taylor and I were actually reading Police reports for our part of the 'murmuring', and it turned out very well! I think we incorporated the 'ordinary and mundane' and the 'divine' into our presentation in surprising but fitting ways.
All in all, the first round of performances were very fun! It's not every day a person gets the privilege of being around so many great minds, and I am a bit sad the class is ending because I will not get to see these people every week.
Of course, the class would be nothing without Dr. Sexson. Brilliant and inspiring.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Today's Presentations...
...were all amazing. I'm constantly inspired by the work of my classmates and the ideas they have come up with and come away with in this Capstone class. Today's presenters were as follows:
-Amy
-Adam
-Pat
-Mick
-Victora
Every presentation was thoughtful and different, though I have to say I want to read all of Mick's because he has had just SUCH A GOOD TIME WRITING IT! :) Really, I'm curious to see what he's come up with as far as the final draft.
Adam is always very deeply thought out and well presented... nice job, Adam!
Amy's was very sweet and I liked her ties with her own relationship to literature and what it meant for her as a girl and as a woman.
Pat always blows my mind with his work (I took a creative writing class with him), and it would be fun to read his final paper as well, which I'm sure I will have a chance to do when he posts it to his blog.
And Victora, well, she's just adorable! And I can tell she has put a lot of thought into the sections of her paper. Actually, I know this because I'm her roommate and I have been listening to her ramble about it for weeks!!
Well done, everyone. I'm excited to hear the next round! I had hoped to maybe read something from my paper today, but I will have the opportunity on Friday!
See you all then!
-Amy
-Adam
-Pat
-Mick
-Victora
Every presentation was thoughtful and different, though I have to say I want to read all of Mick's because he has had just SUCH A GOOD TIME WRITING IT! :) Really, I'm curious to see what he's come up with as far as the final draft.
Adam is always very deeply thought out and well presented... nice job, Adam!
Amy's was very sweet and I liked her ties with her own relationship to literature and what it meant for her as a girl and as a woman.
Pat always blows my mind with his work (I took a creative writing class with him), and it would be fun to read his final paper as well, which I'm sure I will have a chance to do when he posts it to his blog.
And Victora, well, she's just adorable! And I can tell she has put a lot of thought into the sections of her paper. Actually, I know this because I'm her roommate and I have been listening to her ramble about it for weeks!!
Well done, everyone. I'm excited to hear the next round! I had hoped to maybe read something from my paper today, but I will have the opportunity on Friday!
See you all then!
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Melancholy... A Necessary Evil
MY PAPER
In order to arrive at what you are not, you must go through the way in which you are not./And what you do not know is the only thing you know/And what you own is what you do not own/And where you are is where you are not. - T.S. Eliot
T.S. Eliot has been speaking to me; in fact, Eliot has been speaking to me for a long time. At first, he spoke to me through a fellow English major talking excitedly about her idea for a new tattoo.
'I've always wanted a tattoo but I don't know what to get,' she said. 'I want The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock tattooed down my spine.'
'Like, the entire thing?' I asked incredulously.
'Yeah, the whole thing. It will hurt like a bitch.'
Funny now to think that one of my first experiences with Eliot came in reference to something 'hurting like a bitch', but such has been my experience in the English Department of Montana State University. Eliot came to me again three years ago in a basic level class for British Literature, telling me to give, have compassion, and have self control in The Wasteland. His words resonated so loudly with me I tattooed them on my forearm. They tell me to push forward; they tell me to be kind. Most importantly, they tell me to take control of life when there is opportunity for control, because most of the time it will be like spinning out with nothing to grasp on to.
Only months ago, Eliot told me that 'to arrive where you are not, to get from where you are not/You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy'. Three years ago, I never would have understood the gravity of Eliot's words or the direction of his musings, least of all how much they pertain to my life and the events which have led me to this time and this moment, a graduating Senior at Montana State University. In a few short words, Eliot describes a state of melancholy one must be consumed with in order to reach an elevated level of being and a deeper understanding of ones circumstance. Often in life and literature, the state of melancholy gives rise to some of the most epiphanical and realized states of consciousness a human being can experience. Little did I know my own moments of melancholy, space in time spent in total darkness, would not be in vain; I would cultivate the melancholy and move to a place of heightened understanding.
Deployed In Constellated Wars
I smiled. I waved. How many times do we smile and wave in a lifetime? So many things can exist in a smile, and I was smiling this time to assure my mother everything would be alright. The truth was, I did not believe it myself. Everything was not going to be alright. Three semesters of college had elapsed and already I was giving up.
'I am just taking a break,' I told my parents. 'It's just for now until I get everything straightened out. I don't feel like I'm in the right place to focus on school.'
And I wasn't. I was only in the right place to do exactly what I had wanted to do from the beginning; immerse myself in ridiculous levels of intoxication and hang out with my friends. I was officially a college dropout, and looking forward only to the next party and having a job to support my habit. Where was Roethke when I needed him? Roethke would have told me to 'learn by going where I have to go' instead of where I wanted to go. We had yet to become acquainted, but I could have used him then.
My habit became dangerous, and for a while it seemed relatively harmless. In my attempt to take 'control' of my life and do exactly what I wanted to do, I was alienating everyone and everything in my life. No matter. Days began to float by as if they never existed; my feelings toward life became something of nonchalance. Motivation to move in any direction except for toward the nearest drink ceased to exist and I was floating. I thought I was doing great, but I was only spiraling to hopelessness.
My intention for leaving school was guided by the my preoccupation with 'getting better'. I knew indulging in alcohol was affecting everything in my life, and only moving away from Bozeman and away from college was going to fix it for me. Moving away from Bozeman only made me miss friends there and freedom to be away from the watchful eye of my parents. The right people to drink with can always be found in a small town, and I found my way to them before anything else. To make matters worse, I was barely speaking to anyone in my family. It was suffocating and liberating all at once.
Without even realizing it, I had reached my lowest point of despair, and now I am grateful for and also horrified by the memory. During this time, I fell into an abusive relationship and lost all control of my life. My family was in ruins, I was addicted to a person who was never honest or kind, and I had enrolled in and quit school for the second time. Words are given to describe a moment, a feeling, an emotion; I still have no words for this period in my life. I was exhausted.
The Laughter In the Garden, Echoed Ecstasy
I was fidgety. Nervous, even. I sat in a small chair by the door clutching my bag, trying to breathe but finding it incredibly hard to without shaking. Inhale, exhale, I thought, smiling as I was reminded of an old Jane Fonda workout video I used to watch incessantly as a kid. What am I doing here? Waiting. My mind raced back and forth between Jane Fonda and the books on the wall. Volumes of poetry, so many volumes of poetry. I love poetry, I thought. I love Eliot. She was teaching us a lot of Eliot this semester. I rubbed my palms on my pant legs and looked at the door, biting my lip. Where is she? She told me to go wait in her office and she would be up in a minute. That clock is too loud, I thought. Obnoxious ticking. Voices. She's here! I feel like I'm going to vomit.
Kimberly Myers stepped into her office and shut the door, turning to me with a familiar, welcoming smile.
'Alright,' she said, sitting down and swiveling her chair toward me. 'What can I help you with today, Rian?'
Oh god, I thought. I could feel my face starting to flush red and my body temperature rising without warning. Is that window even open? I can't even feel a breeze.
'Well,' I stammered, trying to situate my thoughts but finding it hard to focus. 'I just wanted to tell you that I...I...' I couldn't finish. Tears were running down my cheeks in waves and I found myself in a situation I never thought I would find myself in until that day. I was crying in front of a total stranger; having a nervous breakdown in front of my beloved Professor in her office. How embarrassing.
Looking back, I know I was having a surreal moment of epiphany. I had just spent nearly two years in a state of melancholy so bleak I thought I would never return, and now I was crying because I had reached a level of understanding I thought was impossible. As every struggling author needs inspiration for the book that is their own life, Kimberly Myers was my inspiration and the thing that pulled me out of my desperation. My epiphany with Kimberly Myers was seen and felt. I realized all that I had lost and let myself lose before I came back to college and realized all that I wanted to gain. I truly wanted to turn my life around.
On a break from MSU later that year, I visited a place called Vadar, Washington, and the home of Sharon and Leroy. Leroy was a retired English professor and had this incredible writing studio, a little cottage behind the home he occupied with Sharon. In it, there was a desk with a small lamp and all the essentials for a writer, though incredibly out of date, something I thought was charming. Above the desk hung a poem by Theodore Roethke and in that poem Roethke was telling me to 'learn by going where I have to go'. He was not telling me to go where I wanted to go, or felt like going, or even where I desired to go, but where I had to go. You must, he was saying to me. Why? Because you must. I felt like I was having an out of body experience being in that atmosphere with those words giving me some sort of direction. I was only able to learn where I was supposed to go because I had been utterly consumed with melancholy and despair, was still able to find strength and solitude, and out of the muck I was able to rise like T.S. Eliot's lotus.
Our Only Health is The Disease
What of life without despair? What of experience without disillusionment? To such literary characters as Shakespeare's Hamlet, life without despair would only be disillusionment, as life does not exist without desperation. Hamlet spends nearly four acts of the play focused on melancholy and the evil inner workings of the world, elevated only by his sense of sarcasm and wit that triumphs over nearly every brutal situation. Brutal events leading up to Hamlet's mental breakdown only allow the prince to spend more time seeing the world from a larger perspective, exclaiming:
“How weary, stable, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of the world!”
(I. ii. 133-34)
Human beings often operate under the common misconception that life is inherently good, people are good willed, and a mortal life can be lived without suffering. Hamlet begins to live when he discovers life is not like the proverbial 'bowl of cherries'; it is brief and absolutely filled with suffering, and the detached Hamlet portrayed in part of the play is transcended by the melancholy Hamlet in the next half. At the very least, by immersing himself in his own state of melancholy, Hamlet recognizes the necessity to participate in the world, even if that participation stems from a forlorn and disquieting vantage point. Despair cannot be discounted just as suffering cannot be ignored; existing within the realm of both states is never a choice and darkness, just like lightness, is an undeniable state of being. Hamlet's outrageous and often dramatic view of life is both wonderfully sad and enormously smart.
Characters throughout literary history have given human beings insight on the great inner workings of life, and as the characters all have a story, so do the authors of the great poems so cherished in the literary canon. Kimberly Myers, my beloved professor, never hid her love for the 'melancholy' poets. To her, the work of Wordsworth, Keats, Yeats, and Browning, among many others, was the stuff of genius because it emphasized one of the most important elements of life and literature; melancholy. To John Keats, her favorite, it is far more beautiful to find life in situations where the soul should die rather than flounder in them. In many of his pieces, Keats encourages the reader to find some beauty in a place of sorrow, a place where there is no sweet melody or landscape to drown the sorrow, only the chance to delve deeper into the sadness and find what beauty lies in the abyss. He knows the position; he has been there before. Rather than die in emptiness, a person can always live in sweet sorrow. Keats, like Hamlet, found the ability to exist in something even if that something was dark. The melancholy poets always tell the reader to cultivate the melancholy, and go to a place where that cultivation is possible.
Exemplifying Keats preoccupation with melancholy, 'La Belle Dame sans Merci” uses the intricate life of a lily and a rose to portray the fading vibrancy of the face of his constructed knight at arms. Lilies and roses are both, both willful flowers, each require sunlight and an area with abundant moisture in order to blossom and grow to full potential. The knight in question seems to be a man who needs sunlight himself in all facets of his life, and when faced with a bit of gloomy weather is ready to give up. Keats speaks of the flowers fading in accordance with the spirit of man fading. The flowers expressed are finicky and will die in the midst of a storm, and the poem urges the man not to die like the flowers but to look to something beyond grief, something that will make grief seem beautiful in order to keep his garden in bloom, his sanity intact. Keats also may have been using flowers in reference to the man's face to convey that his soul and brain are a garden to tend to.
Halfway through the poem, Keats changes the focus from the knight he is speaking to over to himself. He sympathizes with the man in question, “alone and pale loitering”, because he has been in a similar situation before. He speaks of meeting a woman, a beautiful woman who captures his heart, speaks of her love for him, and then leaves him suddenly alone. “La Belle Dame sans Merci” means “The Beautiful Women Without Mercy.” After the woman leaves him, he talks of himself walking along the waters edge, though nothing beautiful is growing there and no birds are singing, as if to tell the knight he too has seen this place of despair.
Although Keats has been in the same place as the Knight, the place where nothing beautiful grows and hope is just a glimmer in a very far off distance, he still asks the Knight “Oh what can ail thee, knight at arms,/Alone and pale loitering?” (1.1.899). He knows full well the position the knight is in, but is still asking him why he is allowing his spirit to die in this position.
Where does a person go to be sad? Is there something to gain from going to that place, and, most importantly, can a person return once they've gone to the place of no return? Great authors tell us to imagine the most beautiful thing we have ever imagined in moments of despair to create some sort of comparison; the stark beauty will be a great contrast for the stark ugliness. Sometimes, allowing oneself to be consumed with misery or melancholy can come to a violent and destructive end. Robert Browning, another of the melancholy poets, expresses this violence in his poem 'The Laboratory', a grand illusion of the painful delusion unrequited love can cause.
The woman portrayed in 'The Laboratory' is obviously a woman in distress, so much that she has sought out the help of a chemist to concoct a deadly elixir to poison the mistress of the man she loves. She talks of seeing them together, saying:
He is with her, and they know that I know
Where they are, what they do: they believe my tears flow
While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear
Empty church, to pray God in, for them! ----I am here (2.5-2.8)
Only the bleak existence of a scorned woman could paint a picture such as this. It is in this state of mind that some of the darkest places can be entered and frightening behavior can develop, edging on the cusp of insanity. It is frightening because the woman knows well the man she loves just as she knows the woman or women he has been with. It is she who keeps a watchful eye on the pair, and in this state of mind, she thinks almost that the two are together entirely to watch her descent into depression, as she speaks candidly about thinking the two are laughing at her, and blaming them for her state of mind.
There is a place where some minds can relapse if what they long for is unattainable. The lady in question has obviously been thinking about how to get back at the man she wants, but in a gruesome way. She no longer wants to get rid of the woman he is with in order to be with him again, but wants to kill the woman in order to make the man feel the pain she has been experiencing. The feeling of the poem is cold, the woman's movements and wishes calculated.
The most chilling part about the poem is the calm and collected way the woman executes her plan. She talks excitedly about the time her rival will die after receiving the poison, a point in the poem she she is obviously exuberant. Although she seems overly exciting in saying, “Soon, at the King's, a mere lozenge to give/And Pauline should have just thirty minutes to live!” (6.21-6.22), she is also very cool about it, telling the chemist “grind away, moisten and mash up thy paste/Pound at thy powder, - I am not in haste” (3.9-3.10). Throughout the poem, her urgency can be felt, but the reader can also feel her sense of calm in plotting the murder of another human being, which is in itself a bit disturbing.
There are few things in life that can have the emotional toll unrequited love can have. When love develops with deep passion and cross the line into obsession, things can get dangerous. Fixations cause human beings to lose their sense of identity, sense of self and confidence, and their sensibility altogether. Some say in this frame of mind we are not responsible for our actions, that insanity has taken over our bodies. It is like a drug that causes the human mind to hallucinate, a painful delusion that is hard to overcome.
We, Content At the Last
T.S. Eliot told me to immerse myself in that which I'm not; Roethke told me to 'learn by going where I have to go'. Keats has given me the most beautiful elements of tragedy, melancholy, and despair, while Browning introduced me to some of the most anguishing and horrible. Above all, I have given myself the gift of emergence; I have allowed myself to become re-submerged into memory and the melancholy experiences of my past in order to create a future for myself, and have emerged a much more enlightened, confident, and steady character than the one I was before. I reached a point where I thought I was in my end and would never return to a driven path, but Eliot taught me that 'in my end is my beginning', and there never really is an end. Life, the good and the bad, the light and dark, is cyclical, and every being moving within that cycle is born and born again. For so long, it seemed I was fighting against myself and deliberately pushing down into a tunnel, butting my head up against something hard and never figuring out that all I had to do was turn around. Well, I feel I have finally turned around. Now, my experiences of despair and travesty do not seem worthless; rather, I know these experiences have only pushed me to be the person I am today. I think differently, feel differently, and acknowledge things differently than I did before, and without my melancholy moments, I may never have developed these things I actually like about myself now.
Beryl Markham, a female pilot and brilliant writer, once wrote:
'A life has to move or it stagnates. Even this life, I think. It is no good telling yourself that one day you will wish you had never made that change. It is no good anticipating regrets. Every tomorrow ought not resemble every yesterday.'
Regret is a wasted emotion; life is not a bowl of cherries and never will be. It is, by definition, short and hectic and over sometimes before it has had the chance to begin. Realizing every experience, even the terrible, is important and inherent to human existence is an enormous undertaking; still, it can change one's outlook on life dramatically. I used to be a lot of things before life happened, and now I am a new set of things because life happened, and I don't regret it. Sometimes I miss being very naïve and viewing the world without any criticisms, judgments, or cynicism, but I value the knowledge I've gained and the experiences that have made me who I am. I can never say I have enjoyed or valued the melancholy, the heartbreak, and pain; I would give it all back if I could, but giving it back would mean denying that life exits with these components, and that would be like not living at all.
Roethke once told me to 'learn by going where I have to go', but he also revealed how infinite life is, and how seemingly finite capsules only reveal more infinitude. For him, the world should be seen as a divine play in which we are only lucky enough to participate. In 'The Far Field', Roethke recognizes the beauty of experience and 'the pure serene of memory in one man/a ripple widening from a single stone/winding around the waters of the world'. We are what we experience, and experience is specific to each person; there is no one exactly similar interpretation, in art and in life. If Roethke wants me to learn from going where I have to go instead of where I want to go, I will follow the words of the poet who speaks to me and will continue on the path. I will go with wisdom and experience and be challenged by the thrill of knowing I will never be the person I used to be, but will always be the person I am.
In order to arrive at what you are not, you must go through the way in which you are not./And what you do not know is the only thing you know/And what you own is what you do not own/And where you are is where you are not. - T.S. Eliot
T.S. Eliot has been speaking to me; in fact, Eliot has been speaking to me for a long time. At first, he spoke to me through a fellow English major talking excitedly about her idea for a new tattoo.
'I've always wanted a tattoo but I don't know what to get,' she said. 'I want The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock tattooed down my spine.'
'Like, the entire thing?' I asked incredulously.
'Yeah, the whole thing. It will hurt like a bitch.'
Funny now to think that one of my first experiences with Eliot came in reference to something 'hurting like a bitch', but such has been my experience in the English Department of Montana State University. Eliot came to me again three years ago in a basic level class for British Literature, telling me to give, have compassion, and have self control in The Wasteland. His words resonated so loudly with me I tattooed them on my forearm. They tell me to push forward; they tell me to be kind. Most importantly, they tell me to take control of life when there is opportunity for control, because most of the time it will be like spinning out with nothing to grasp on to.
Only months ago, Eliot told me that 'to arrive where you are not, to get from where you are not/You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy'. Three years ago, I never would have understood the gravity of Eliot's words or the direction of his musings, least of all how much they pertain to my life and the events which have led me to this time and this moment, a graduating Senior at Montana State University. In a few short words, Eliot describes a state of melancholy one must be consumed with in order to reach an elevated level of being and a deeper understanding of ones circumstance. Often in life and literature, the state of melancholy gives rise to some of the most epiphanical and realized states of consciousness a human being can experience. Little did I know my own moments of melancholy, space in time spent in total darkness, would not be in vain; I would cultivate the melancholy and move to a place of heightened understanding.
Deployed In Constellated Wars
I smiled. I waved. How many times do we smile and wave in a lifetime? So many things can exist in a smile, and I was smiling this time to assure my mother everything would be alright. The truth was, I did not believe it myself. Everything was not going to be alright. Three semesters of college had elapsed and already I was giving up.
'I am just taking a break,' I told my parents. 'It's just for now until I get everything straightened out. I don't feel like I'm in the right place to focus on school.'
And I wasn't. I was only in the right place to do exactly what I had wanted to do from the beginning; immerse myself in ridiculous levels of intoxication and hang out with my friends. I was officially a college dropout, and looking forward only to the next party and having a job to support my habit. Where was Roethke when I needed him? Roethke would have told me to 'learn by going where I have to go' instead of where I wanted to go. We had yet to become acquainted, but I could have used him then.
My habit became dangerous, and for a while it seemed relatively harmless. In my attempt to take 'control' of my life and do exactly what I wanted to do, I was alienating everyone and everything in my life. No matter. Days began to float by as if they never existed; my feelings toward life became something of nonchalance. Motivation to move in any direction except for toward the nearest drink ceased to exist and I was floating. I thought I was doing great, but I was only spiraling to hopelessness.
My intention for leaving school was guided by the my preoccupation with 'getting better'. I knew indulging in alcohol was affecting everything in my life, and only moving away from Bozeman and away from college was going to fix it for me. Moving away from Bozeman only made me miss friends there and freedom to be away from the watchful eye of my parents. The right people to drink with can always be found in a small town, and I found my way to them before anything else. To make matters worse, I was barely speaking to anyone in my family. It was suffocating and liberating all at once.
Without even realizing it, I had reached my lowest point of despair, and now I am grateful for and also horrified by the memory. During this time, I fell into an abusive relationship and lost all control of my life. My family was in ruins, I was addicted to a person who was never honest or kind, and I had enrolled in and quit school for the second time. Words are given to describe a moment, a feeling, an emotion; I still have no words for this period in my life. I was exhausted.
The Laughter In the Garden, Echoed Ecstasy
I was fidgety. Nervous, even. I sat in a small chair by the door clutching my bag, trying to breathe but finding it incredibly hard to without shaking. Inhale, exhale, I thought, smiling as I was reminded of an old Jane Fonda workout video I used to watch incessantly as a kid. What am I doing here? Waiting. My mind raced back and forth between Jane Fonda and the books on the wall. Volumes of poetry, so many volumes of poetry. I love poetry, I thought. I love Eliot. She was teaching us a lot of Eliot this semester. I rubbed my palms on my pant legs and looked at the door, biting my lip. Where is she? She told me to go wait in her office and she would be up in a minute. That clock is too loud, I thought. Obnoxious ticking. Voices. She's here! I feel like I'm going to vomit.
Kimberly Myers stepped into her office and shut the door, turning to me with a familiar, welcoming smile.
'Alright,' she said, sitting down and swiveling her chair toward me. 'What can I help you with today, Rian?'
Oh god, I thought. I could feel my face starting to flush red and my body temperature rising without warning. Is that window even open? I can't even feel a breeze.
'Well,' I stammered, trying to situate my thoughts but finding it hard to focus. 'I just wanted to tell you that I...I...' I couldn't finish. Tears were running down my cheeks in waves and I found myself in a situation I never thought I would find myself in until that day. I was crying in front of a total stranger; having a nervous breakdown in front of my beloved Professor in her office. How embarrassing.
Looking back, I know I was having a surreal moment of epiphany. I had just spent nearly two years in a state of melancholy so bleak I thought I would never return, and now I was crying because I had reached a level of understanding I thought was impossible. As every struggling author needs inspiration for the book that is their own life, Kimberly Myers was my inspiration and the thing that pulled me out of my desperation. My epiphany with Kimberly Myers was seen and felt. I realized all that I had lost and let myself lose before I came back to college and realized all that I wanted to gain. I truly wanted to turn my life around.
On a break from MSU later that year, I visited a place called Vadar, Washington, and the home of Sharon and Leroy. Leroy was a retired English professor and had this incredible writing studio, a little cottage behind the home he occupied with Sharon. In it, there was a desk with a small lamp and all the essentials for a writer, though incredibly out of date, something I thought was charming. Above the desk hung a poem by Theodore Roethke and in that poem Roethke was telling me to 'learn by going where I have to go'. He was not telling me to go where I wanted to go, or felt like going, or even where I desired to go, but where I had to go. You must, he was saying to me. Why? Because you must. I felt like I was having an out of body experience being in that atmosphere with those words giving me some sort of direction. I was only able to learn where I was supposed to go because I had been utterly consumed with melancholy and despair, was still able to find strength and solitude, and out of the muck I was able to rise like T.S. Eliot's lotus.
Our Only Health is The Disease
What of life without despair? What of experience without disillusionment? To such literary characters as Shakespeare's Hamlet, life without despair would only be disillusionment, as life does not exist without desperation. Hamlet spends nearly four acts of the play focused on melancholy and the evil inner workings of the world, elevated only by his sense of sarcasm and wit that triumphs over nearly every brutal situation. Brutal events leading up to Hamlet's mental breakdown only allow the prince to spend more time seeing the world from a larger perspective, exclaiming:
“How weary, stable, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of the world!”
(I. ii. 133-34)
Human beings often operate under the common misconception that life is inherently good, people are good willed, and a mortal life can be lived without suffering. Hamlet begins to live when he discovers life is not like the proverbial 'bowl of cherries'; it is brief and absolutely filled with suffering, and the detached Hamlet portrayed in part of the play is transcended by the melancholy Hamlet in the next half. At the very least, by immersing himself in his own state of melancholy, Hamlet recognizes the necessity to participate in the world, even if that participation stems from a forlorn and disquieting vantage point. Despair cannot be discounted just as suffering cannot be ignored; existing within the realm of both states is never a choice and darkness, just like lightness, is an undeniable state of being. Hamlet's outrageous and often dramatic view of life is both wonderfully sad and enormously smart.
Characters throughout literary history have given human beings insight on the great inner workings of life, and as the characters all have a story, so do the authors of the great poems so cherished in the literary canon. Kimberly Myers, my beloved professor, never hid her love for the 'melancholy' poets. To her, the work of Wordsworth, Keats, Yeats, and Browning, among many others, was the stuff of genius because it emphasized one of the most important elements of life and literature; melancholy. To John Keats, her favorite, it is far more beautiful to find life in situations where the soul should die rather than flounder in them. In many of his pieces, Keats encourages the reader to find some beauty in a place of sorrow, a place where there is no sweet melody or landscape to drown the sorrow, only the chance to delve deeper into the sadness and find what beauty lies in the abyss. He knows the position; he has been there before. Rather than die in emptiness, a person can always live in sweet sorrow. Keats, like Hamlet, found the ability to exist in something even if that something was dark. The melancholy poets always tell the reader to cultivate the melancholy, and go to a place where that cultivation is possible.
Exemplifying Keats preoccupation with melancholy, 'La Belle Dame sans Merci” uses the intricate life of a lily and a rose to portray the fading vibrancy of the face of his constructed knight at arms. Lilies and roses are both, both willful flowers, each require sunlight and an area with abundant moisture in order to blossom and grow to full potential. The knight in question seems to be a man who needs sunlight himself in all facets of his life, and when faced with a bit of gloomy weather is ready to give up. Keats speaks of the flowers fading in accordance with the spirit of man fading. The flowers expressed are finicky and will die in the midst of a storm, and the poem urges the man not to die like the flowers but to look to something beyond grief, something that will make grief seem beautiful in order to keep his garden in bloom, his sanity intact. Keats also may have been using flowers in reference to the man's face to convey that his soul and brain are a garden to tend to.
Halfway through the poem, Keats changes the focus from the knight he is speaking to over to himself. He sympathizes with the man in question, “alone and pale loitering”, because he has been in a similar situation before. He speaks of meeting a woman, a beautiful woman who captures his heart, speaks of her love for him, and then leaves him suddenly alone. “La Belle Dame sans Merci” means “The Beautiful Women Without Mercy.” After the woman leaves him, he talks of himself walking along the waters edge, though nothing beautiful is growing there and no birds are singing, as if to tell the knight he too has seen this place of despair.
Although Keats has been in the same place as the Knight, the place where nothing beautiful grows and hope is just a glimmer in a very far off distance, he still asks the Knight “Oh what can ail thee, knight at arms,/Alone and pale loitering?” (1.1.899). He knows full well the position the knight is in, but is still asking him why he is allowing his spirit to die in this position.
Where does a person go to be sad? Is there something to gain from going to that place, and, most importantly, can a person return once they've gone to the place of no return? Great authors tell us to imagine the most beautiful thing we have ever imagined in moments of despair to create some sort of comparison; the stark beauty will be a great contrast for the stark ugliness. Sometimes, allowing oneself to be consumed with misery or melancholy can come to a violent and destructive end. Robert Browning, another of the melancholy poets, expresses this violence in his poem 'The Laboratory', a grand illusion of the painful delusion unrequited love can cause.
The woman portrayed in 'The Laboratory' is obviously a woman in distress, so much that she has sought out the help of a chemist to concoct a deadly elixir to poison the mistress of the man she loves. She talks of seeing them together, saying:
He is with her, and they know that I know
Where they are, what they do: they believe my tears flow
While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear
Empty church, to pray God in, for them! ----I am here (2.5-2.8)
Only the bleak existence of a scorned woman could paint a picture such as this. It is in this state of mind that some of the darkest places can be entered and frightening behavior can develop, edging on the cusp of insanity. It is frightening because the woman knows well the man she loves just as she knows the woman or women he has been with. It is she who keeps a watchful eye on the pair, and in this state of mind, she thinks almost that the two are together entirely to watch her descent into depression, as she speaks candidly about thinking the two are laughing at her, and blaming them for her state of mind.
There is a place where some minds can relapse if what they long for is unattainable. The lady in question has obviously been thinking about how to get back at the man she wants, but in a gruesome way. She no longer wants to get rid of the woman he is with in order to be with him again, but wants to kill the woman in order to make the man feel the pain she has been experiencing. The feeling of the poem is cold, the woman's movements and wishes calculated.
The most chilling part about the poem is the calm and collected way the woman executes her plan. She talks excitedly about the time her rival will die after receiving the poison, a point in the poem she she is obviously exuberant. Although she seems overly exciting in saying, “Soon, at the King's, a mere lozenge to give/And Pauline should have just thirty minutes to live!” (6.21-6.22), she is also very cool about it, telling the chemist “grind away, moisten and mash up thy paste/Pound at thy powder, - I am not in haste” (3.9-3.10). Throughout the poem, her urgency can be felt, but the reader can also feel her sense of calm in plotting the murder of another human being, which is in itself a bit disturbing.
There are few things in life that can have the emotional toll unrequited love can have. When love develops with deep passion and cross the line into obsession, things can get dangerous. Fixations cause human beings to lose their sense of identity, sense of self and confidence, and their sensibility altogether. Some say in this frame of mind we are not responsible for our actions, that insanity has taken over our bodies. It is like a drug that causes the human mind to hallucinate, a painful delusion that is hard to overcome.
We, Content At the Last
T.S. Eliot told me to immerse myself in that which I'm not; Roethke told me to 'learn by going where I have to go'. Keats has given me the most beautiful elements of tragedy, melancholy, and despair, while Browning introduced me to some of the most anguishing and horrible. Above all, I have given myself the gift of emergence; I have allowed myself to become re-submerged into memory and the melancholy experiences of my past in order to create a future for myself, and have emerged a much more enlightened, confident, and steady character than the one I was before. I reached a point where I thought I was in my end and would never return to a driven path, but Eliot taught me that 'in my end is my beginning', and there never really is an end. Life, the good and the bad, the light and dark, is cyclical, and every being moving within that cycle is born and born again. For so long, it seemed I was fighting against myself and deliberately pushing down into a tunnel, butting my head up against something hard and never figuring out that all I had to do was turn around. Well, I feel I have finally turned around. Now, my experiences of despair and travesty do not seem worthless; rather, I know these experiences have only pushed me to be the person I am today. I think differently, feel differently, and acknowledge things differently than I did before, and without my melancholy moments, I may never have developed these things I actually like about myself now.
Beryl Markham, a female pilot and brilliant writer, once wrote:
'A life has to move or it stagnates. Even this life, I think. It is no good telling yourself that one day you will wish you had never made that change. It is no good anticipating regrets. Every tomorrow ought not resemble every yesterday.'
Regret is a wasted emotion; life is not a bowl of cherries and never will be. It is, by definition, short and hectic and over sometimes before it has had the chance to begin. Realizing every experience, even the terrible, is important and inherent to human existence is an enormous undertaking; still, it can change one's outlook on life dramatically. I used to be a lot of things before life happened, and now I am a new set of things because life happened, and I don't regret it. Sometimes I miss being very naïve and viewing the world without any criticisms, judgments, or cynicism, but I value the knowledge I've gained and the experiences that have made me who I am. I can never say I have enjoyed or valued the melancholy, the heartbreak, and pain; I would give it all back if I could, but giving it back would mean denying that life exits with these components, and that would be like not living at all.
Roethke once told me to 'learn by going where I have to go', but he also revealed how infinite life is, and how seemingly finite capsules only reveal more infinitude. For him, the world should be seen as a divine play in which we are only lucky enough to participate. In 'The Far Field', Roethke recognizes the beauty of experience and 'the pure serene of memory in one man/a ripple widening from a single stone/winding around the waters of the world'. We are what we experience, and experience is specific to each person; there is no one exactly similar interpretation, in art and in life. If Roethke wants me to learn from going where I have to go instead of where I want to go, I will follow the words of the poet who speaks to me and will continue on the path. I will go with wisdom and experience and be challenged by the thrill of knowing I will never be the person I used to be, but will always be the person I am.
Before Reading My Paper... Read These Poems
55. La Belle Dame Sans Merci by John Keats
Ballad
I.
O WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.
II.
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms! 5
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.
III.
I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew, 10
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
IV.
I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light, 15
And her eyes were wild.
V.
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look’d at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan. 20
VI.
I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.
VII.
She found me roots of relish sweet, 25
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
“I love thee true.”
VIII.
She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept, and sigh’d fill sore, 30
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.
IX.
And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dream’d—Ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dream’d 35
On the cold hill’s side.
X.
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—“La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!” 40
XI.
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.
XII.
And this is why I sojourn here, 45
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.
The Laboratory by Robert Browning
NOW that I, tying thy glass mask tightly,
May gaze thro' these faint smokes curling whitely,
As thou pliest thy trade in this devil's-smithy--
Which is the poison to poison her, prithee?
He is with her; and they know that I know
Where they are, what they do: they believe my tears flow
While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear
Empty church, to pray God in, for them! -- I am here.
Grind away, moisten and mash up thy paste,
Pound at thy powder, -- I am not in haste!
Better sit thus, and observe thy strange things,
Than go where men wait me and dance at the King's.
That in the mortar -- you call it a gum?
Ah, the brave tree whence such gold oozings come!
And yonder soft phial, the exquisite blue,
Sure to taste sweetly, -- is that poison too?
Had I but all of them, thee and thy treasures,
What a wild crowd of invisible pleasures!
To carry pure death in an earring, a casket,
A signet, a fan-mount, a filligree-basket!
Soon, at the King's, a mere lozenge to give
And Pauline should have just thirty minutes to live!
But to light a pastille, and Elise, with her head
And her breast and her arms and her hands, should drop dead!
Quick -- is it finished? The colour's too grim!
Why not soft like the phial's, enticing and dim?
Let it brighten her drink, let her turn it and stir,
And try it and taste, ere she fix and prefer!
What a drop! She's not little, no minion like me--
That's why she ensnared him: this never will free
The soul from those masculine eyes, -- say, 'no!'
To that pulse's magnificent come-and-go.
For only last night, as they whispered, I brought
My own eyes to bear on her so, that I thought
Could I keep them one half minute fixed, she would fall,
Shrivelled; she fell not; yet this does not all!
Not that I bid you spare her the pain!
Let death be felt and the proof remain;
Brand, burn up, bite into its grace--
He is sure to remember her dying face!
Is it done? Take my mask off! Nay, be not morose
It kills her, and this prevents seeing it close:
The delicate droplet, my whole fortune's fee--
If it hurts her, beside, can it ever hurt me?
Now, take all my jewels, gorge gold to your fill,
You may kiss me, old man, on my mouth if you will!
But brush this dust off me, lest horror it brings
Ere I know it -- next moment I dance at the King's!
AND NOW FOR MY PAPER...
Ballad
I.
O WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.
II.
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms! 5
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.
III.
I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew, 10
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
IV.
I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light, 15
And her eyes were wild.
V.
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look’d at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan. 20
VI.
I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.
VII.
She found me roots of relish sweet, 25
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
“I love thee true.”
VIII.
She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept, and sigh’d fill sore, 30
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.
IX.
And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dream’d—Ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dream’d 35
On the cold hill’s side.
X.
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—“La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!” 40
XI.
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.
XII.
And this is why I sojourn here, 45
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.
The Laboratory by Robert Browning
NOW that I, tying thy glass mask tightly,
May gaze thro' these faint smokes curling whitely,
As thou pliest thy trade in this devil's-smithy--
Which is the poison to poison her, prithee?
He is with her; and they know that I know
Where they are, what they do: they believe my tears flow
While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear
Empty church, to pray God in, for them! -- I am here.
Grind away, moisten and mash up thy paste,
Pound at thy powder, -- I am not in haste!
Better sit thus, and observe thy strange things,
Than go where men wait me and dance at the King's.
That in the mortar -- you call it a gum?
Ah, the brave tree whence such gold oozings come!
And yonder soft phial, the exquisite blue,
Sure to taste sweetly, -- is that poison too?
Had I but all of them, thee and thy treasures,
What a wild crowd of invisible pleasures!
To carry pure death in an earring, a casket,
A signet, a fan-mount, a filligree-basket!
Soon, at the King's, a mere lozenge to give
And Pauline should have just thirty minutes to live!
But to light a pastille, and Elise, with her head
And her breast and her arms and her hands, should drop dead!
Quick -- is it finished? The colour's too grim!
Why not soft like the phial's, enticing and dim?
Let it brighten her drink, let her turn it and stir,
And try it and taste, ere she fix and prefer!
What a drop! She's not little, no minion like me--
That's why she ensnared him: this never will free
The soul from those masculine eyes, -- say, 'no!'
To that pulse's magnificent come-and-go.
For only last night, as they whispered, I brought
My own eyes to bear on her so, that I thought
Could I keep them one half minute fixed, she would fall,
Shrivelled; she fell not; yet this does not all!
Not that I bid you spare her the pain!
Let death be felt and the proof remain;
Brand, burn up, bite into its grace--
He is sure to remember her dying face!
Is it done? Take my mask off! Nay, be not morose
It kills her, and this prevents seeing it close:
The delicate droplet, my whole fortune's fee--
If it hurts her, beside, can it ever hurt me?
Now, take all my jewels, gorge gold to your fill,
You may kiss me, old man, on my mouth if you will!
But brush this dust off me, lest horror it brings
Ere I know it -- next moment I dance at the King's!
AND NOW FOR MY PAPER...
Monday, April 19, 2010
Can I Redeem Myself?
Today's presentation was an enormous failure on my part ... I didn't come to class with something concrete from my paper to present and I whizzed through my presentation only explaining the very basics of what I'm writing about. I was followed by Lisa, Taylor, Sam, and Tai ... how intimidating! Those presentations were amazing and have given me the inspiration to structure my paper a bit differently. On to more editing.
The truth is, I only have about four good pages of material for my paper. The rest is scribbled out in notes or kicking around in my head like it has been for the better part of three weeks. I know what I want to present and how I want to present it, but I keep coming up short. How is it possible to have everything displayed perfectly in your own head and then mess it all up when it comes to actually writing the thing? Anyway, I have to begin in my end (because in my end is my beginning) and go from there. I will talk about my experiences as an English major and everything that has led up to this moment, and then I want to talk about other experiences, like those of Roethke, Hamlet, Eliot, and probably Browning and Keats. I have about four pages of analysis written up on two poems (one by Browning, one by Keats), but I don't want my paper to be completely about analysis. It needs to have more depth and more umph... !
Taylor's paper in it's entirety was inspiring... she has a way with words different from everyone else in the class. I like how she has tied her own experiences in so perfectly with authors and characters from our stories. I always love hearing Sam speak because her words are soft and subtle but the message behind them is always so powerful. Tai is always hilarious... and inappropriate, which is what I love about him. I realized during presentation, though, that while I am very nervous to present something solid, everyone in class is pretty nervous to put themselves out there with something they have created. Such is life. I need to just get it done.
I will have something to READ on Wednesday or Friday, whenever Dr. Sexson will let me go! And I will have my paper posted in it's entirety this evening or day after for everyones viewing pleasure.
The truth is, I only have about four good pages of material for my paper. The rest is scribbled out in notes or kicking around in my head like it has been for the better part of three weeks. I know what I want to present and how I want to present it, but I keep coming up short. How is it possible to have everything displayed perfectly in your own head and then mess it all up when it comes to actually writing the thing? Anyway, I have to begin in my end (because in my end is my beginning) and go from there. I will talk about my experiences as an English major and everything that has led up to this moment, and then I want to talk about other experiences, like those of Roethke, Hamlet, Eliot, and probably Browning and Keats. I have about four pages of analysis written up on two poems (one by Browning, one by Keats), but I don't want my paper to be completely about analysis. It needs to have more depth and more umph... !
Taylor's paper in it's entirety was inspiring... she has a way with words different from everyone else in the class. I like how she has tied her own experiences in so perfectly with authors and characters from our stories. I always love hearing Sam speak because her words are soft and subtle but the message behind them is always so powerful. Tai is always hilarious... and inappropriate, which is what I love about him. I realized during presentation, though, that while I am very nervous to present something solid, everyone in class is pretty nervous to put themselves out there with something they have created. Such is life. I need to just get it done.
I will have something to READ on Wednesday or Friday, whenever Dr. Sexson will let me go! And I will have my paper posted in it's entirety this evening or day after for everyones viewing pleasure.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Melancholy
I have been getting more and more comfortable with my paper topic as the days go on. Writing 'the best paper I have ever written' is kind of daunting, Dr. Sexson, and I don't know if I'm up to the challenge, but I feel better about it today and here's why...
Yesterday, I found myself in a heated debate with a friend of mine over the topic of my paper! He was trying to tell me (furiously, I might add) that I should not include the idea of melancholy in my paper at all. 'Do away with it completely', he said. I wasn't sure I could defend the point of my paper as well as I did.... but I guess I can! We ended the conversation on the same page and I told him exactly why the idea of melancholy had to be used in my paper. He's a smart cookie... he would have known if what I was saying was complete and utter nonsense. Apparently, it wasn't. This makes me happy. :)
I am presenting my paper on Friday. Hope all goes well! For some reason, standing in front of a classroom of people, I turn in to a fumbling mess trying to present a paper. Hope it doesn't happen on Friday... see you all then!
Yesterday, I found myself in a heated debate with a friend of mine over the topic of my paper! He was trying to tell me (furiously, I might add) that I should not include the idea of melancholy in my paper at all. 'Do away with it completely', he said. I wasn't sure I could defend the point of my paper as well as I did.... but I guess I can! We ended the conversation on the same page and I told him exactly why the idea of melancholy had to be used in my paper. He's a smart cookie... he would have known if what I was saying was complete and utter nonsense. Apparently, it wasn't. This makes me happy. :)
I am presenting my paper on Friday. Hope all goes well! For some reason, standing in front of a classroom of people, I turn in to a fumbling mess trying to present a paper. Hope it doesn't happen on Friday... see you all then!
Monday, April 12, 2010
Inspiration From Essays - 12 April 2010
Today's batch of essays included Kevin, Abby, Joan, Katie, and Ronald ... very impressive! Also, very daunting. I have to present on Friday(?), I believe, and I have to say it's an intimidating group of five to follow!
I couldn't help but notice a correlation among all the presenters; each person there today found the most inspiration talking about their own experiences, things that moved them or jolted them into an epiphanical moment, or the path that led them to the senior capstone in English Literature. Admittedly, my paper will probably follow something of the same outline as I will be chronicling the experiences that have led to my graduation (finally, YES!!) from MSU.
I don't think it would be very honest to write about the idea of epiphany in a senior capstone class without using one's own experiences. How else would you know what epiphany is? In order to know, one has to experience, and sometimes experience several times to come to know something for the first time (something Katie referenced in her paper).
I have had my share of experiences that have led me to this moment, this day, this place in my life. I've been to three different colleges, dropped out of school twice, had experiences (romantic and otherwise) which I would like to forget, and battled alcoholism in my family and my personal life. Somehow, though, I feel like I have wound up in the right place. Melancholy has been the overriding tone for most of my college career, but through those experiences have come wisdom I never thought I would have. I will talk about all of this in my paper... it's all about learning where I HAVE to go and not where I WANT to go. School is winding down and my life is about to change very drastically, and I feel now more than ever that I'm on the track to where I HAVE to go. I know I have to. One of my favorite quotes by Beryl Markham explains this period of transition better than I ever could:
'a life has to move or it stagnates. even this life, i think. it is no good telling yourself that one day you will wish you had never made that change; it is no good anticipating regrets. every tomorrow ought not to resemble every yesterday.'
I feel like this is quite fitting for most of us in the class because we're all realizing this every day; every class we take, every lecture we attend, every book we read (or re-read) tells us that this is the way life is supposed to be. I don't ever want to live in a life that is stagnant, and so I will continue on learning where I have to go. I am in the process of applying for a job position in Guam; it's a world away, and while I am very excited about the prospect of leaving, something inside me doesn't want to go. I want to go back to Red Lodge and be near my family, but I know this will only lead to the kind of stagnation I so badly want to avoid. And so, however melancholy I may feel when I get to where I'm going, I can only be sure that I will come away from the experience with some sort of elevated understanding of myself or the world or both. Whether this will be a 'light' epiphany or 'dark' epiphany, I cannot be sure until I've experienced it, but at least I feel like I know what I have to do.
I couldn't help but notice a correlation among all the presenters; each person there today found the most inspiration talking about their own experiences, things that moved them or jolted them into an epiphanical moment, or the path that led them to the senior capstone in English Literature. Admittedly, my paper will probably follow something of the same outline as I will be chronicling the experiences that have led to my graduation (finally, YES!!) from MSU.
I don't think it would be very honest to write about the idea of epiphany in a senior capstone class without using one's own experiences. How else would you know what epiphany is? In order to know, one has to experience, and sometimes experience several times to come to know something for the first time (something Katie referenced in her paper).
I have had my share of experiences that have led me to this moment, this day, this place in my life. I've been to three different colleges, dropped out of school twice, had experiences (romantic and otherwise) which I would like to forget, and battled alcoholism in my family and my personal life. Somehow, though, I feel like I have wound up in the right place. Melancholy has been the overriding tone for most of my college career, but through those experiences have come wisdom I never thought I would have. I will talk about all of this in my paper... it's all about learning where I HAVE to go and not where I WANT to go. School is winding down and my life is about to change very drastically, and I feel now more than ever that I'm on the track to where I HAVE to go. I know I have to. One of my favorite quotes by Beryl Markham explains this period of transition better than I ever could:
'a life has to move or it stagnates. even this life, i think. it is no good telling yourself that one day you will wish you had never made that change; it is no good anticipating regrets. every tomorrow ought not to resemble every yesterday.'
I feel like this is quite fitting for most of us in the class because we're all realizing this every day; every class we take, every lecture we attend, every book we read (or re-read) tells us that this is the way life is supposed to be. I don't ever want to live in a life that is stagnant, and so I will continue on learning where I have to go. I am in the process of applying for a job position in Guam; it's a world away, and while I am very excited about the prospect of leaving, something inside me doesn't want to go. I want to go back to Red Lodge and be near my family, but I know this will only lead to the kind of stagnation I so badly want to avoid. And so, however melancholy I may feel when I get to where I'm going, I can only be sure that I will come away from the experience with some sort of elevated understanding of myself or the world or both. Whether this will be a 'light' epiphany or 'dark' epiphany, I cannot be sure until I've experienced it, but at least I feel like I know what I have to do.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
My Paper Topic - Finally!
Alright, I know I haven't blogged in a long time... like last semester, I'm having trouble keeping up with my blogs this semester. After discussion with Dr. Sexson, I think I have an idea for my final paper.
I took a class from Dr. Kimberly Myers a few years ago (British Literature, I believe?) and she talked a lot about the melancholy poets and how from the awful and divine state of melancholy can spring some of the most epiphanical experiences. In fact, she was more enamoured with the idea of melancholy and poetics than anyone I have ever met. I think I want to focus my final paper on this state of melancholy and the work that has been produced from this state of being or a state of being a direct reflection of the melancholy work.
I hope to focus on Theodore Roethke, citing both 'The Far Field' and 'The Waking' in my paper, and will also focus on Hamlet as one of the most melancholy figures in literary history. I want to draw from some of the poets I touched on with Kimberly Myers, like Keats, Wordsworth, and Yeats, but I haven't sorted all of that out yet.
In many cases, melancholy is a state in which one almost has to exist in order to reach some sort of higher consciousness, found in many characters in literary history and even in the poets doing the writing. It's an awful state because it is one, like Roethke said, where people 'learn by going where they HAVE to go' instead of where they want to go. It's beautiful because there is nothing that exists which is more bittersweet than being in this state of melancholy. I have specific notes at home from Dr. Sexson which I will probably post later.
My paper will probably touch on the same topics as Katie Mason (light epiphanies from dark experiences), but I want to focus more on the dark experiences and dark epiphany. Not all epiphanic experiences can be light, a common misconception.
Honestly, life is short and difficult and slippery and dark ... and the realization of this may open up the mind to more epiphanical experiences than anyone can imagine. Dr. Sexson puts all of this far more eloquently than I can ... bollocks. More later!
Oh... and I think my title will be 'I Learn By Going Where I Have to Go', referencing Theordore Roethke, of course. And I will probably come back round to the beginning of my paper in the end. In my end of my beginning. I'll be referencing T.S. Eliot quite a bit, as well. Obviously. :)
I took a class from Dr. Kimberly Myers a few years ago (British Literature, I believe?) and she talked a lot about the melancholy poets and how from the awful and divine state of melancholy can spring some of the most epiphanical experiences. In fact, she was more enamoured with the idea of melancholy and poetics than anyone I have ever met. I think I want to focus my final paper on this state of melancholy and the work that has been produced from this state of being or a state of being a direct reflection of the melancholy work.
I hope to focus on Theodore Roethke, citing both 'The Far Field' and 'The Waking' in my paper, and will also focus on Hamlet as one of the most melancholy figures in literary history. I want to draw from some of the poets I touched on with Kimberly Myers, like Keats, Wordsworth, and Yeats, but I haven't sorted all of that out yet.
In many cases, melancholy is a state in which one almost has to exist in order to reach some sort of higher consciousness, found in many characters in literary history and even in the poets doing the writing. It's an awful state because it is one, like Roethke said, where people 'learn by going where they HAVE to go' instead of where they want to go. It's beautiful because there is nothing that exists which is more bittersweet than being in this state of melancholy. I have specific notes at home from Dr. Sexson which I will probably post later.
My paper will probably touch on the same topics as Katie Mason (light epiphanies from dark experiences), but I want to focus more on the dark experiences and dark epiphany. Not all epiphanic experiences can be light, a common misconception.
Honestly, life is short and difficult and slippery and dark ... and the realization of this may open up the mind to more epiphanical experiences than anyone can imagine. Dr. Sexson puts all of this far more eloquently than I can ... bollocks. More later!
Oh... and I think my title will be 'I Learn By Going Where I Have to Go', referencing Theordore Roethke, of course. And I will probably come back round to the beginning of my paper in the end. In my end of my beginning. I'll be referencing T.S. Eliot quite a bit, as well. Obviously. :)
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