I will probably be posting a Michael Sexson-ism for each blog I write from now until the end of class :).
SEXSON-ISM 15 Jan 2010
'An 18-year-old male can't handle anything of overwhelming complexity or beauty. Have any of you ever MET an 18-year-old male?' - Dr. Michael Sexson
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
'All Finite Things Reveal Infinitude' - Theodore Roethke
Last class period, I was given a personal assignment by Dr. Sexson to explore and analyze another poem by Theodore Roethke, 'The Far Field'. Should anyone care to read the poem, I will include the poem in its entirety at the end of this blog. The poem reminded me of an experience I had when I was very young and seemingly incapable of understanding anything with any sort of depth.
I can't remember how old I was, but I know I was still in the phase of 'Sesame Street'. My Grandpa James passed away (my mother's father), and I remember my mom trying to explain the concept of death. I was always a persistant child and would ask question after question if I didn't understand what was going on around me. When I finally came to the realization that my Grandpa was gone and never coming back, I was absolutely hysterical. I remember my mother trying to console me as I hugged a big pillow with the 'Sesame Street' characters smiling at me from the fabric. In that moment, I began to understand that in life there is death, in death there is peace, but no one actually knows what happens after death. Once a person passes away, they never return, and the world keeps going on without them. Big questions kept racing through my mind; what would happen to the world eventually? Would I still exist in another realm or just be a small void on the planet? Would there come a time when the earth wouldn't exist? And then what? What comes after? Does anything come after? This was all incredibly overwhelming for me and I stayed in my room most of the day crying and trying to find some solace in my newfound reality. The next day, of course, I had forgotten all about it and was back to the 'usual'.
You're probably wondering why this has anything to do with the Roethke poem, and I will try to explain as best I can. In 'The Far Field', Roethke describes a man coming to understand things around him as he hadn't before, and understanding death in a different way. He recognizes moving from a state of innocence ('once i was something like this, mindless') to a state of absolute understanding. The man in the poem finds comfort in the idea of death. Would it be better to continue living knowing the unknown will always exist, or would death be more peaceful?
Roethke states that 'all finite things reveal infinitude', which is something I realized as a small child trying to come to terms with death. Death is a finite concept but the idea of infinitude after death absolutely overwhelms my senses (it did then and it still does now). I try not to let my mind wander in that direction too much because my mind works in overdrive and I feel like I'm suffocating.
In his poem, Roethke describes the beauty of this feeling, of knowing that in every thing and concept exists something that isn't absolute; something that continues beyond that thing or concept. The author feels renewed by the thought of death because he knows death is not the end. Something exists after death; but only in death can we ever know what that something is.
The poem is wonderful... everyone should read it. It really applies to the idea of 'epiphany' and, I'm sure, other ideas we will be kicking around this semester. Hope you guys enjoy it (and thank you, Dr. Sexson, for introducing me to it).
THE FAR FIELD
I
I dream of journeys repeatedly:
Of flying like a bat deep into a narrowing tunnel
Of driving alone, without luggage, out a long peninsula,
The road lined with snow-laden second growth,
A fine dry snow ticking the windshield,
Alternate snow and sleet, no on-coming traffic,
And no lights behind, in the blurred side-mirror,
The road changing from glazed tarface to a rubble of stone,
Ending at last in a hopeless sand-rut,
Where the car stalls,
Churning in a snowdrift
Until the headlights darken.
II
At the field's end, in the corner missed by the mower,
Where the turf drops off into a grass-hidden culvert,
Haunt of the cat-bird, nesting-place of the field-mouse,
Not too far away from the ever-changing flower-dump,
Among the tin cans, tires, rusted pipes, broken machinery, --
One learned of the eternal;
And in the shrunken face of a dead rat, eaten by rain and ground-beetles
(I found in lying among the rubble of an old coal bin)
And the tom-cat, caught near the pheasant-run,
Its entrails strewn over the half-grown flowers,
Blasted to death by the night watchman.
I suffered for young birds, for young rabbits caught in the mower,
My grief was not excessive.
For to come upon warblers in early May
Was to forget time and death:
How they filled the oriole's elm, a twittering restless cloud, all one morning,
And I watched and watched till my eyes blurred from the bird shapes, --
Cape May, Blackburnian, Cerulean, --
Moving, elusive as fish, fearless,
Hanging, bunched like young fruit, bending the end branches,
Still for a moment,
Then pitching away in half-flight,
Lighter than finches,
While the wrens bickered and sang in the half-green hedgerows,
And the flicker drummed from his dead tree in the chicken-yard.
-- Or to lie naked in sand,
In the silted shallows of a slow river,
Fingering a shell,
Thinking:
Once I was something like this, mindless,
Or perhaps with another mind, less peculiar;
Or to sink down to the hips in a mossy quagmire;
Or, with skinny knees, to sit astride a wet log,
Believing:
I'll return again,
As a snake or a raucous bird,
Or, with luck, as a lion.
I learned not to fear infinity,
The far field, the windy cliffs of forever,
The dying of time in the white light of tomorrow,
The wheel turning away from itself,
The sprawl of the wave,
The on-coming water.
III
The river turns on itself,
The tree retreats into its own shadow.
I feel a weightless change, a moving forward
As of water quickening before a narrowing channel
When banks converge, and the wide river whitens;
Or when two rivers combine, the blue glacial torrent
And the yellowish-green from the mountainy upland, --
At first a swift rippling between rocks,
Then a long running over flat stones
Before descending to the alluvial plane,
To the clay banks, and the wild grapes hanging from the elmtrees.
The slightly trembling water
Dropping a fine yellow silt where the sun stays;
And the crabs bask near the edge,
The weedy edge, alive with small snakes and bloodsuckers, --
I have come to a still, but not a deep center,
A point outside the glittering current;
My eyes stare at the bottom of a river,
At the irregular stones, iridescent sandgrains,
My mind moves in more than one place,
In a country half-land, half-water.
I am renewed by death, thought of my death,
The dry scent of a dying garden in September,
The wind fanning the ash of a low fire.
What I love is near at hand,
Always, in earth and air.
IV
The lost self changes,
Turning toward the sea,
A sea-shape turning around, --
An old man with his feet before the fire,
In robes of green, in garments of adieu.
A man faced with his own immensity
Wakes all the waves, all their loose wandering fire.
The murmur of the absolute, the why
Of being born falls on his naked ears.
His spirit moves like monumental wind
That gentles on a sunny blue plateau.
He is the end of things, the final man.
All finite things reveal infinitude:
The mountain with its singular bright shade
Like the blue shine on freshly frozen snow,
The after-light upon ice-burdened pines;
Odor of basswood on a mountain-slope,
A scent beloved of bees;
Silence of water above a sunken tree :
The pure serene of memory in one man, --
A ripple widening from a single stone
Winding around the waters of the world.
I can't remember how old I was, but I know I was still in the phase of 'Sesame Street'. My Grandpa James passed away (my mother's father), and I remember my mom trying to explain the concept of death. I was always a persistant child and would ask question after question if I didn't understand what was going on around me. When I finally came to the realization that my Grandpa was gone and never coming back, I was absolutely hysterical. I remember my mother trying to console me as I hugged a big pillow with the 'Sesame Street' characters smiling at me from the fabric. In that moment, I began to understand that in life there is death, in death there is peace, but no one actually knows what happens after death. Once a person passes away, they never return, and the world keeps going on without them. Big questions kept racing through my mind; what would happen to the world eventually? Would I still exist in another realm or just be a small void on the planet? Would there come a time when the earth wouldn't exist? And then what? What comes after? Does anything come after? This was all incredibly overwhelming for me and I stayed in my room most of the day crying and trying to find some solace in my newfound reality. The next day, of course, I had forgotten all about it and was back to the 'usual'.
You're probably wondering why this has anything to do with the Roethke poem, and I will try to explain as best I can. In 'The Far Field', Roethke describes a man coming to understand things around him as he hadn't before, and understanding death in a different way. He recognizes moving from a state of innocence ('once i was something like this, mindless') to a state of absolute understanding. The man in the poem finds comfort in the idea of death. Would it be better to continue living knowing the unknown will always exist, or would death be more peaceful?
Roethke states that 'all finite things reveal infinitude', which is something I realized as a small child trying to come to terms with death. Death is a finite concept but the idea of infinitude after death absolutely overwhelms my senses (it did then and it still does now). I try not to let my mind wander in that direction too much because my mind works in overdrive and I feel like I'm suffocating.
In his poem, Roethke describes the beauty of this feeling, of knowing that in every thing and concept exists something that isn't absolute; something that continues beyond that thing or concept. The author feels renewed by the thought of death because he knows death is not the end. Something exists after death; but only in death can we ever know what that something is.
The poem is wonderful... everyone should read it. It really applies to the idea of 'epiphany' and, I'm sure, other ideas we will be kicking around this semester. Hope you guys enjoy it (and thank you, Dr. Sexson, for introducing me to it).
THE FAR FIELD
I
I dream of journeys repeatedly:
Of flying like a bat deep into a narrowing tunnel
Of driving alone, without luggage, out a long peninsula,
The road lined with snow-laden second growth,
A fine dry snow ticking the windshield,
Alternate snow and sleet, no on-coming traffic,
And no lights behind, in the blurred side-mirror,
The road changing from glazed tarface to a rubble of stone,
Ending at last in a hopeless sand-rut,
Where the car stalls,
Churning in a snowdrift
Until the headlights darken.
II
At the field's end, in the corner missed by the mower,
Where the turf drops off into a grass-hidden culvert,
Haunt of the cat-bird, nesting-place of the field-mouse,
Not too far away from the ever-changing flower-dump,
Among the tin cans, tires, rusted pipes, broken machinery, --
One learned of the eternal;
And in the shrunken face of a dead rat, eaten by rain and ground-beetles
(I found in lying among the rubble of an old coal bin)
And the tom-cat, caught near the pheasant-run,
Its entrails strewn over the half-grown flowers,
Blasted to death by the night watchman.
I suffered for young birds, for young rabbits caught in the mower,
My grief was not excessive.
For to come upon warblers in early May
Was to forget time and death:
How they filled the oriole's elm, a twittering restless cloud, all one morning,
And I watched and watched till my eyes blurred from the bird shapes, --
Cape May, Blackburnian, Cerulean, --
Moving, elusive as fish, fearless,
Hanging, bunched like young fruit, bending the end branches,
Still for a moment,
Then pitching away in half-flight,
Lighter than finches,
While the wrens bickered and sang in the half-green hedgerows,
And the flicker drummed from his dead tree in the chicken-yard.
-- Or to lie naked in sand,
In the silted shallows of a slow river,
Fingering a shell,
Thinking:
Once I was something like this, mindless,
Or perhaps with another mind, less peculiar;
Or to sink down to the hips in a mossy quagmire;
Or, with skinny knees, to sit astride a wet log,
Believing:
I'll return again,
As a snake or a raucous bird,
Or, with luck, as a lion.
I learned not to fear infinity,
The far field, the windy cliffs of forever,
The dying of time in the white light of tomorrow,
The wheel turning away from itself,
The sprawl of the wave,
The on-coming water.
III
The river turns on itself,
The tree retreats into its own shadow.
I feel a weightless change, a moving forward
As of water quickening before a narrowing channel
When banks converge, and the wide river whitens;
Or when two rivers combine, the blue glacial torrent
And the yellowish-green from the mountainy upland, --
At first a swift rippling between rocks,
Then a long running over flat stones
Before descending to the alluvial plane,
To the clay banks, and the wild grapes hanging from the elmtrees.
The slightly trembling water
Dropping a fine yellow silt where the sun stays;
And the crabs bask near the edge,
The weedy edge, alive with small snakes and bloodsuckers, --
I have come to a still, but not a deep center,
A point outside the glittering current;
My eyes stare at the bottom of a river,
At the irregular stones, iridescent sandgrains,
My mind moves in more than one place,
In a country half-land, half-water.
I am renewed by death, thought of my death,
The dry scent of a dying garden in September,
The wind fanning the ash of a low fire.
What I love is near at hand,
Always, in earth and air.
IV
The lost self changes,
Turning toward the sea,
A sea-shape turning around, --
An old man with his feet before the fire,
In robes of green, in garments of adieu.
A man faced with his own immensity
Wakes all the waves, all their loose wandering fire.
The murmur of the absolute, the why
Of being born falls on his naked ears.
His spirit moves like monumental wind
That gentles on a sunny blue plateau.
He is the end of things, the final man.
All finite things reveal infinitude:
The mountain with its singular bright shade
Like the blue shine on freshly frozen snow,
The after-light upon ice-burdened pines;
Odor of basswood on a mountain-slope,
A scent beloved of bees;
Silence of water above a sunken tree :
The pure serene of memory in one man, --
A ripple widening from a single stone
Winding around the waters of the world.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
The Epiphany, The Lotus, and Me
To me, the word 'epiphany' or anything attached to it has always come to mind as a state of realization; a frame of mind associated with a previous frame of mind but understood on an elevated level.
According to our syllabus, a religious understanding of the term stresses the sudden manifestation of a divine being, while it exists within a literary context as the sudden showing forth of the essential nature of something through aesthetic means. Have I ever had an epiphany? I cannot be sure. I have certainly had moments in my life where I believe to understand the essential nature of a person or thing on an elevated level, but I do not believe I have ever had an experience of the 'Divine'. I think my mind is often tricked into believing it is having a Divine experience, especially when listening to music. My brain seems to operate on a different level, real life starts to fade away, and I feel like I am able to understand absolutely everything on an enlightened plane when the right music is playing. I'm sure everyone in the class has felt that way at some point or another. The right song can give anyone the sense of having a significant revelation, right?
Just like song has a profound affect, poetry does the same, which is why I am so thrilled to be starting the class with an Eliot poem. The description in the poem of a lotus rising out of the pool pinpoints where the epiphany occurs, fitting because of the background of the flower itself. The legend of the Lotus flower can be traced back to ancient Egypt. The flower itself was considered sacred because of it's origin, birth, and blossom. The flower grows usually from the depths of muddy swamps and emerges into a beautiful white or pink blossom, the only plant to fruit and flower simultaneously. At night, the flower closes and sinks underwater and rises and opens again at daybreak, believed to be a symbol of the sun, creation, and rebirth. The lotus flower is seemingly a perfect symbol for the religious definition of 'epiphany', or sudden manifestation of the divine.
My own experience with literature has been ongiong ever since I was a child. Starting with 'The Boxcar Children' and poems by Shel Silverstein, I have moved through the works of Ayn Rand and John Steinbeck in High School to William Blake and Harold Bloom in college (along with several artists around and in between). I have actually been pursuing this particular degree for some time now, at one point thinking I wasn't interested in a college education and then coming to the dramatic realization that I didn't know what else I would do without one. Is that an epiphany? I have taken or attempted almost every English class offered at MSU, as well as a few in Dillon, MT and one or two in Missoula (I seem to move around a bit). Taking British Literature II from Kimberly Myers a few years ago was one of the best experiences of my life. She taught me how to view literature in a completely different way and also taught me about beauty of the melancholy poets, for which I feel indebted to her. I felt like I was on an enlightened plane for the entirety of that semester because of Kimberly Myers and her appreciation, respect, and exhiliration for the poets and artists she was introducing us to.
On a break from MSU, I visted 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). Anyway, above the desk hung a poem by Theodore Roethke and at that point in my life, the words resonated so loudly with me. I felt like I was having an out of body experience being in that atmosphere with those words giving me some sort of direction. Did I experience an epiphany? I can't be sure. In fact, I can't be sure I have ever experienced an actual epiphany in my college career, but I suppose the contents of this class and Dr. Sexson will help me figure that out. This was the poem hanging on the wall in Vadar...it remains one of my favorites.
The Waking by Theodore Roethke
The Waking
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
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