Someone Great

 To Paul

1982-2015

There is something I need to write here. Something I need to acknowledge with words. Two days ago, someone I knew, someone so young, so good, so great, died.

All of a sudden. Just like that. Since, I have tried to put words to the devastation of it, but it's been impossible. Billy Collins was right -"how feeble our vocabulary in the face of death/how impossible to write it down..." A boulder of disbelief rises up so big that every little word is throttled by it, too trivial and weak to compete, not near enough to attest to the colossal shock that these last few days have been.  Like a bad dream that you can't wake up from. Surreal and so terribly real at the same time.

But somehow I feel I owe it to Paul to say something. Even though I did not know him as a close friend - just a classmate, a revered peer, an acquaintance, a familiar figure while growing up. He's always been someone I've liked and admired, someone I've held in the highest regard. He was always there, in the periphery of my thoughts as top of my most esteemed list. I have always thought of him fondly, and always will. 

I'm thinking now of all the times when some famous person of note died and Paul was always the first to acknowledge it on Facebook, no exceptions, with a few sincere words. He never missed actually! And now, well, now he is gone. And I want to lay down some words to honour his passing.  And I want to post it here, as Paul was someone who stopped by my blogs and commented in - for which I was really  grateful - (a post on The National - he had the greatest taste in, and love for, music :) It's not easy getting people to read your work, out of their own free will! But Paul did, acquaintance that he was. That was the kind of him. Considerate and thoughtful.

Paul was always one of my favourite people. You know those? People who you hold in the highest regard, have the utmost admiration for, who are good, decent, genuinely nice, interesting and interested in worthy things, with impeccable taste, someone whose views you whole-heartedly share and agree with, someone synonymous with your own journey in some way, someone who to you, shines that little bit brighter than everyone else. Anytime he liked a link or anything of mine on Facebook I would feel a little flush of pride - (as I'm sure others did.. ) well if it's good enough for a thumbs-up from Paul, then it must pass the muster!! He was an authority on all things from culture to current affairs to politics and was actively, articulately interested in them - his posts on social media upping the calibre of it considerably. Someone whose field was science (and brilliantly so) but who was also a clear lover of the arts - music, film, books, poetry, art. Someone who was acutely aware of the world around him and engaged with it intellectually, creatively, compassionately, fully.  Someone, who cared.

I've always felt a kind of affinity with Paul ever since we were young. He is the same age as me - our birthday 3 days apart (I've often been regaled by my mother and his of how we shared the same room in the hospital for a while at birth.) We started school together and he soon became my first crush. I still remember to this day the two of us swapping sloppy kid kisses at my 5th birthday party! (Another event that my mother and his often likes to chuckle about...!) I thought he was the bees knees then and to this day, I think my kid self was a discerning one alright to see something special in him right off.


We were in many a same class then for the next 13 years.  Paul was one of the most intelligent people I have ever known (intimidatingly so), always top of the class, an easy feat for him. He excelled at every subject, not just academically, but with real talent. I was especially always in awe of his artwork in Junior Cert which would be brought in by our clearly wowed teacher as an example of pure genius-at-work. (It was at that moment that the rest of us amateurs knew we were screwed...). He was also one of the most modest and humble intelligent people I've known, never bragging or boastful or one to shine a spotlight on his achievements - I suppose, the trait of a real genius.  Not to mention clever and witty, even from a young age. One of my most abiding memories from primary school is while in 4th class sitting at a table beside Paul, and him entertaining us all with the many adventures of his wooden ruler named 'Steel Tips', which he'd colored in with pen at both ends to give it its defining namesake. It kept us in the giggles during many a boring lesson. Always full of imagination and verve. 

Post-school days, I haven't seen that much of Paul. But I remember all the times I did. He would always make a point of saying hello and talking, no matter what the situation, or number of years passed. I remember one Christmas when he went out of his way to come over and say Happy Christmas in a crowded nite-club. I was disarmed by how really nice a gesture that was at the time, still am. Or how he took time to post a thoughtfully-selected song on Facebook for a birthday once - maybe one of the loveliest songs I've ever heard - in what felt like a genuine birthday wish. How often do people you know on an offhand basis do things like that?

It's strange really though what the people from your school year mean to you - it's like you're always 'together' in tackling the world; troops sent out in the same brigade to the frontlines of Life. Even though our lives may run on parallel lines now, you're still always acutely aware of them. Aware of who they are and how they are, and cheering them on. Now, when one of them dies, it's like the whole brigade is affected and takes a stumble. We're all connected and feel the shudder of the loss irrevocably. Especially when it happens just as life is getting into gear. Especially, when it's one of the very best of us.

I've had many experiences with death but this time it is a terrible fact that makes my head, not just heart, hurt. Everything rebels against the accepting the fact of it. How can someone so great, so engrossed and involved in life, just stop?  I can't believe it, no matter how I try. It is a cold hard truth that trips you up every minute, normality shot to pieces.  The world spins madly on, when it feels like it should stop. I've always felt W.H. Auden's 'Funeral Blues' poem was spot-on; but never so much until now when every line is a tolling truth. The sheer incomprehensibility of it: one day there he is engaged in all the issues of the day, specifically passionately conversing on our recent political situation in Ireland - the next day, not. An abrupt silence. And now the void of disbelief. The terrible O-gape of despair of grief. The utter utter unfairness of it. Like a contract broken harshly. And we're all in the sheer shock of the aftermath, hearts agape, still stuck and wondering on the marauding questions - What? Why? Why? A tremendous, terrible loss. You think you have a handle on the certainty of what has happened, almost accepted the anguish of the fact, but then - no, it comes around again, a new wallop, over and over again, the blow never lessening.
 
I once wrote a poem in Irish about a tragedy that affected our local area some years ago. Its main line has been ringing in my head the past few days: 'Dobhrón - tá sé cosúil leAigéan/Aigéan lán de ghortú agus de dheora/ 'S ní féidir linn snámh'('grief is like an ocean/full of hurts and tears/and we can't swim...') Now I think yes,  and each and every wave a new realisation of what has happened, crashing over and over again on the consciousness (..."It takes an ocean not to break..."). An unrelenting undulation of sorrow that can't be consoled, can't be subsumed into normal daily life. Land some place far far away. 

For people who knew Paul, there is a horrible gash in our world now. Nothing will be the same, because it will be without him: a vital person missing, to his family and friends, but also even, in some way, to all of us, the people who only half-knew him, whose life ran parallel to his, yet, will miss him too. He was that kind of person. I thought that in these wordless few days, if I could just find some words, I might be able to make some sense of it, apply a kind of compress of verbal comprehension. But no. How to navigate grief, how do people do it? When I think on Paul's family and friends who loved him so much... I understand that what I feel is just a mere tiny iota scrap of what they are suffering. I can't imagine it. And my heart goes out to them, breaks, for them. Paul was such an unique and special person, truly, so clearly treasured among them. I pray and hope that they find some comfort, some solace, to help them through. Memories that are made of light and a buoyant strength in each other. 

The epitaph 'a great guy' has been the tribute on everyone's lips in these days since. Said in a tone that implies - we were so lucky to have known him. We were. And in this case, the epitaphs are in no way inflated, not even a smidgeon: death has not cast a grander glow on his life, no, it has only magnified our sense of loss, for Paul really was 'great', in every sense of the word. A great student and academic, a great mind and talent, with many great accomplishments to his name. A great friend by all accounts and person to be around, great craic, a great entertainer, brilliant and keen musician too.  Someone who possessed a great inherent goodness and sensibility, a keen sensitivity and curiosity, a grandiose thoughtfulness. A genuinely affable and 'good' guy, really, incredibly likeable.  What we would say in the highest terms of local endearment and what his father professed most belovedly today: 'a wee gem.' Truly. He was one of the best - not just the best in everything he did, with superlative attributes, but best as in one of the best people you could ever know.  And I hope that his loved ones are continually reminded of that and uplifted by just what a credit and joy he was to them. Let that be another means of finding land in the coming days. 

I like to think of Paul now in the great starry cosmos, looking down on us all, taking scope of Everything, getting to examine the inner workings of the universe first-hand, maybe cracking a witty joke along the way. As Paul Durcan noted in his poem to the recently deceased Seamus Heaney, maybe Paul, like our great poet has 'become the spaceman I've always longed to be - In flight - breaking the sound barrier out in the cosmos - which... Has always been my dream, my home, my Elysium.'  I like to think of him even rubbing shoulders with Heaney, and all the other greats lost to us, settling in with an array of like-minded thinkers as well as passed family members. Maybe The Man Above/The Powers That Be were in such desperate need of  some real good wit and intelligence up there, that out of the entire world - Paul was the only candidate perfect enough to fit that bill. Or there was some pressing universe issue that needed immediate attention from the absolute best there was. As I can't, for the life of me, think of any other reason as to why he had to go so quick, so soon, so much to the loss of all around him. 

A son, a brother, a nephew, a cousin, an uncle, a boyfriend, a best friend, a friend, a colleague, or just a fond acquaintance, a kindred spirit, an admired person: to know Paul was a privilege, and he will never be forgotten in the minds and hearts of those who did.  He has made a mark that won't easily be erased. It's so desperately hard to believe he's gone; but hopefully not so much to believe that - as the song says - there is a light that never goes out. And his is a bright and beautiful one. A melody that has lodged itself in our hearts, to stay forever. 

It must be true - the best really do go first.  You were the first of us to go Paul, undaunted pioneer. You are and will be missed by so many, and so so much.   
Safe home now, friend. 
Rest in starry peace xx

Pocket Poems for Poetry Day

Today is Poetry Day here in Ireland, an event created by Poetry Ireland to bring poetry to the attention of the nation.  One of the initiatives on the menu is 'pocket poems' - literally a pocket sized  poem to take with you and keep in your pocket. On Poetry Ireland's website there are a number of 'pocket' poems to choose from to download and/or distribute for the day. (You can see them here: Poetry Ireland Poetry Day) 

Pocket poems as a venture have been doing the rounds for a while in America. And I just love the idea of them. They make poetry so accessible. And personal. And keepsake-able. So I've decided to post some of my own choices of pocket poems here for you to enjoy (and even print out and keep, in your pocket if you like.) Poetry Ireland's pickings are slim, so I thought I'd add to them. I would love to distribute them, but don't really have the means or copyright licensing! But I fantasize about the day when poems are handed out as leaflets in the street to passers-by. Imagine! 

Because that's exactly the medium that poems excel in of course - one that can be carried around, in your pocket, casual, accessible. Words to smooth the rough road of routine. Words to remind you of what really matters. A sort of note-to-self with a wisdom agenda. A memo from the heart reminding us to stop and pay attention to life as it buzzes on around us. Poems that can be committed to memory to comfort and assure. Poems that are are short but say so much. Poems that will orbit us all day, little satellites of meaning, flashing neon insights of extraordinary alighting in the ordinary.

My choices here today are some of my favourite short poems. They have all three things in common: they are short, not just pocket-sized but maybe even palm-sized; they are simply rendered but laden with miniature life-lessons and reflections that I hope will bring a smile to your face; they are all products of attentiveness to the ordinary world around us and from that that awareness, offer advice and wisdom and surprise observation. In modern day lingo, we would maybe call it mindfulness. Perhaps poetry's greatest attribute and side-effect.  Try it :)

Happy Poetry Day! 

~ Siobhán 

*Join in Poetry Day on Twitter by tweeting your favourite poem with the hashtag #PoetryDayIrl or on Facebook & nominate 3 friends to share theirs :)

~ Billy Collins

~ Raymond Carver

~ May Sarton

~ Lawrence Ferlinghetti

~ Ted Kooser

~ Maya Angelou

Poems On Paintings (Repost*)

'The Poet' - Marc Chagall

*I'm reposting this post as it was recently featured in an art website: www.upandcomingart.co.uk of which I am really chuffed. I have added to the original post which appeared here a few years ago. It's such a fascinating subject! You can check out the link: here


'Painting is silent poetry and poetry is painting that speaks' Plutarch once said. Maybe that explains the interconnectedness of these two genres and why there have been so many poems written about paintings throughout the ages and of course, vice-versa, so many paintings inspired by poems.

As I write this I'm just back from a gallery visit, where I have spent a lot of time as a silent spectator, like most visitors, trying to glean what each painting has to say, trying to put words into its mouth so to speak. 

And I'm not the only one. I see that the gallery runs creative writing days where members of the public are invited to come in, notebooks in tow, pick a painting of choice and write about it. Sometimes there are workshops to direct this writing, sometimes it's just a solitary activity. I must admit I'm fascinated by the blending of these two artistic mediums, the putting a voice to the 'silence' of the paintings so to speak.

And I'm not the only one to feel like this. Many writers throughout the decades have taken inspiration from famous paintings and written poems as 'odes' to the painting, verbal narratives to the 'silent story', or penned philosophical and often personal musings on a piece of art dear to them. An 'ekphrastic' poem is the technical name for such a poem. The poet Alfred Corn states in his essay on the history of ekphrastic verse* (You can read more about ekphrastic poetry as a genre: here) that "once the ambition of producing a complete and accurate description is put aside, a poem can provide new aspects for a work of visual art."

Poetry on art does not seek to describe accurately what is there, but to add to the understanding of it. It does indeed provide new aspects for a work of art. It heightens our experience of it and adds dimensions that otherwise would have gone unnoticed. A veritable viewfinder.

'The Lady of Shalott' - John William Waterhouse

From as far back as Homer and Dante, there have been many famous examples of poems written specifically on paintings. As there is also many a painting that has had its origins in a poem, or even a line of a poem. John Waterhouse's painting 'The Lady of Shalott' is a representation of a scene from Tennyson's poem of the same name, as was his 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci', inspired by Keats' poem. Indeed there are many painters who have been described as 'poets' and poets who have been described as 'painters'. Marc Chagall and Dylan Thomas are two that spring to mind. And then of course, there are also poets who are painters too (William Blake for one), and painters who are also poets (none other than Michelangelo.) Poet Mark Strand went to the Yale School of Art and Architecture intending to become a painter, until he found poetry and switched to a different course.

It is safe to say that poets who write on art have an affection for it, some are even connoisseurs. It's not as if they're making a random imaginative leap in the dark but rather an informed meditation, even though feeling is foremost in it. Some poets like John Berryman even have had an extensive background in art - making his living as an art critic before becoming a poet. Edward Hirsch, poet and art enthuse, has collected poems and writings - what he calls 'imaginative acts of attention' - on the entire art collection of The Art Institute of Chicago in his book called 'Transforming Vision: Writers on Art'. (You can read the interesting introduction: here)

Perhaps the most famous example of a poem written on a painting is WH Auden's meditation on Breughel's 'The Fall of Icarus'. It provides not only an accompanying narrative to the painting, but a powerful psychological and memorable commentary on human suffering too. Auden has used the painting as proof proper of how the world always goes indifferently on in regards to suffering and death:

 

         'The Fall of Icarus' - Breughel

Musee des Beaux Arts -W. H. Auden 

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on. 

This last line is a verbal echo of what we see in the painting. Auden has amplified the painting's meaning in his poem so much so that it seems almost necessary complementary reading.

American poet William Carlos Williams was a poet very much inspired by art. In fact he has written a whole volume of poetry on Breughel's paintings. He too has written a poem on 'The Fall of Icarus', a poem which in its very structure mimics the composition of the painting. In the painting, the fall of Icarus is not the focal point, it happens on the sidelines, as a footnote almost to the main picture. The mention of Icarus only in the very last line of the poem reflects this defining aspect of the  painting quite astutely:

Landscape With The Fall of Icarus - William Carlos Williams

According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring

a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry

of the year was
awake tingling
near

the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself

sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings’ wax

unsignificantly
off the coast
there was

a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning

Breughel seems to be a popular artist choice for poets. His 'Hunters in the Snow' painting has also garnered a lot of poetic responses. American poets John Berryman and Wallace Stevens have both written poems on it. (You can read them both here: The Poet Speaks of Art). 

Wallace Stevens was another American poet intensely interested in art. (See: 'The Problem of Painters and Poets' article here). His poem on Picasso's 'The Old Guitarist' is one that shows just how much of a muse a painting can be. It is quite lengthy so I won't post it all here, just an excerpt:



'The Old Guitarist' - Pablo Picasso

The Man With the Blue Guitar - Wallace Stevens
I
The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green

They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."

The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."

And they said then, "But play you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,

A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are...

In this poem the poet imagines the mind and voice of the figure in the painting and takes off from there into a vaulting imaginative meaning of the painting and philosophical reflection on life. Stevens applies a robust imaginative and intellectual take to the painting creating a world from it that can only be briefly glimpsed or guessed at by looking at it. Poems on paintings broaden the horizon for interpretation - reading them you feel your own synapses open up to just what exactly a painting can mean. It is not tethered to any boxed definition, but rather much like a poem, is wonderfully open to immersive speculation.

My favourite poems on paintings  are the ones that seem to say exactly and eloquently what the painting expresses visually. I love Wislawa Szymborska's short take on Vermeer's 'The Milkmaid.' Her quiet language simply but effectively states the grandeur of this painting, emphasizing the point of art's redeeming qualities. It is a poem that places so much importance on the place of art in our lives and one that invites a second look at the painting in question, not to mention a second awed and appreciative look at art in general:

'Vermeer' - Wislawa Szymborska

So long as that woman from the Rijksmuseum
in painted quiet and concentration
keeps pouring milk day after day
from the pitcher to the bowl
the World hasn’t earned
the world’s end.

Other poems on paintings are welcome translations of complex art. So many things can be read into abstract and modern art that it can be daunting. I love X.J. Kennedy's description of Marcel DuChamp's 'Nude Descending a Staircase.' It helps us see what is there and in such an entertaining way. The language is vivid and precise - 'she sifts in sunlight' - how accurate a description is that of what we visually see? And how about the perfectness of the word 'thresh' to describe the broken planes of lines in the picture?! For me, this poem brings the painting to life, so much so that I can see this 'one-woman waterfall' in flamboyant manner. The poem enlivens what we see with language that provides a 3D quality to the painting. It is a chant which brings its still self to buoyant life:


Nude Descending a Staircase - X. J. Kennedy 

Toe upon toe, a snowing flesh,

a gold of lemon, root and rind,
she sifts in sunlight down the stairs
with nothing on. Nor on her mind. 

We spy beneath the banister

a constant thresh of thigh on thigh--
her lips imprint the swinging air
that parts to let her parts go by. 

One-woman waterfall, she wears
her slow descent like a long cape
and pausing, on the final stair
collects her motions into shape.

Poets are well up to the task of providing worthy words to a visual masterpiece. Anne Sexton's 'Starry Starry Night', a poem on Van Gogh's famous painting of the same name, is another such example. The night 'boils with eleven stars', it is beast-like, a dragon. This poem is also indicative of how a painting can reflect a personal emotional state. How we can project on a work of art our feelings, and how a work of art can take on our feelings, a permeable acquiescent witness. This particular poem shows how one interpretation of a painting can be so unexpected and we may marvel at how different it may be from our own, the wonder of art reall:

The Starry Night - Anne Sexton

The town does not exist

except where one black-haired tree slips

up like a drowned woman into the hot sky.

The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars.   

Oh starry starry night! This is how

I want to die.

It moves. They are all alive.

Even the moon bulges in its orange irons   

to push children, like a god, from its eye.

The old unseen serpent swallows up the stars.   

Oh starry starry night! This is how   

I want to die:

into that rushing beast of the night,   

sucked up by that great dragon, to split   

from my life with no flag,

no belly,

no cry.

Have you ever seen a painting and wondered however you could express in words the image that accosted you, the light that was rendered so real, the colour that melted into your soul? One of my favourite poems on paintings takes an Edward Hopper painting as inspiration. Hopper of course, was a master at depicting light. The sunlight in his paintings is like a mirror-image, photographically precise, of the real thing. There is nothing else quite like it.  Just how to describe looking at it?! Even as a writer, I falter. But Anne Carson manages quite well in her poem on the painting 'Room in Brooklyn' to evoke its effect:



Room in Brooklyn - Anne Carson

This
slow
day
moves
Along the room
I
hear
its
axles
go
A gradual dazzle
upon
the ceiling
Gives me that
racy
bluishyellow
feeling
As hours
blow
the wide
way
Down my afternoon. 

We wonder - what is this 'bluishyellow' feeling exactly? The feeling that is created in the painting of course. One lends expression to the other. Here, as with other poems on paintings, there is a perfect symbiosis state of being.

For me, poems written on paintings elucidate the painting that little bit more and bear witness to its 'silent story' that is etched out in colours and figures, brushstrokes and lines. For the casual art observer like me who often finds it hard to express what effect a painting has or to really peer into its soul, poetry is a helpful guide. Better than a gallery guide or catalogue, a poem can divulge a hidden story to the painting or hit on a personal meaning that resonates greatly with us, the viewer or reader - yes, that's exactly what this painting is about/makes me feel/is saying.  Now I get it!

In other words, a poem opens a secret door to let us into the painting. It draws our notice to the inherent stories woven there. Poems written on paintings offer the reader a verbal expression of the inexpressible feelings emanating from the artwork. They are explanation, realisation and intimation. In some cases they are welcome translation, and in others, imaginative transcendence. In every case, they are illumination. Some paintings I've never felt any great affection for I have looked at in a new light after reading a particular poem on them. In basic terms, poetry can be effective PR for a painting, and vice-versa. That symbiosis again.

What ekphrastic poetry does above all I think is demonstrate how a painting can be harboured so intimately in one's mind and heart. Essentially, how visual art is an ever arresting and affective medium. And how awe and affinity for it can be filtered not just via head-tilts and sighs and acquiring poster-prints, but in words.  For if words are indeed to be put to a painting, to speak its silent story, who better than a poet to do it? Art historians do it through fact and technique, poets do it through imagination.

Art and poetry may seem like two entirely different genres, but ekphrastic poetry begs to differ. Every art touches upon another and in doing so, broadens appreciation mutually. This has certainly been the case for me.

Below are some more poems on paintings to enjoy.

To read more poems on paintings click: here

~ Siobhán

 

  

'Bedroom in Arles' - Vincent Van Gogh

Van Gogh's Bed - Jane Flanders

is orange,
like Cinderella's coach, like
the sun when he looked it
straight in the eye.

is narrow, he sleeps alone,

tossing between two pillows, 

while it carried him
bumpily to the ball.

is clumsy,
but friendly. A peasant
built the frame; and old wife beat
the mattress till it rose like meringue.

is empty,
morning light pours in
like wine, melody, fragrance,
the memory of happiness.

To Marc Chagall - Paul Éluard

Donkey or cow, cockerel or horse
On to the skin of a violin
A singing man a single bird
An agile dancer with his wife

A couple drenched in their youth

The gold of the grass lead of the sky
Separated by azure flames
Of the health-giving dew
The blood glitters the heart rings

A couple the first reflection

And in a cellar of snow
The opulent vine draws
A face with lunar lips
That never slept at night.



















Number 1 - Jackson Pollock

DIGRESSION ON NUMBER 1, 1948 - Frank O' Hara

I am ill today but I am not
too ill. I am not ill at all.
It is a perfect day, warm
for winter, cold for fall.

A fine day for seeing. I see
ceramics, during lunch hour, by
Miro, and I see the sea by Leger;
light, complicated Metzingers
and a rude awakening by Brauner,
a little table by Picasso, pink.

I am tired today but I am not
too tired. I am not tired at all.
There is the Pollock, white, harm
will not fall, his perfect hand

and the many short voyages. They'll
never fence the silver range.
Stars are out and there is sea
enough beneath the glistening earth
to bear me toward the future
which is not so dark. I see.

Can Writers Read Too Much?

As an insatiable reader I would automatically answer the question the title of this post poses with a vehement No! But as a writer, I'm beginning to wonder if there is such a thing as reading too much.

Reading, it goes without saying, is essential to writing. It is the yin to its yang. One can't exist without the other. They're the two sides of one coin. One the passive part, the other the active, a type of verbal inhalation and creative exhalation. But when engaging in both these sides, is it necessary to find balance between the two? Like a see-saw, will one go down if the other goes up? It's all about achieving balance. And recently my scales have been off (by a truckload of books).

 

What exactly is reading too much? On an ordinary scale, until your eyes hurt would usually be a tip-off. Or until words kick up a blunderbuss through your head obscuring fiction and reality (ahem, guilty, several times over). But for a writer to read too much? What does that mean when writers, out of all people, read SO much? It is a part of their work after all. But what is the quantity of reading that will impede upon writing? And can it really impede, as its primary function is first and foremost always to encourage?

On the one hand I feel like I am feeding the furnaces of writing with reading so many books; on the other, like I am shutting them off. I love to read. All writers love to read, all encourage wide reading if you want to be a writer (Stephen King advises us to read 'a lot'.  MFA writing courses have lengthy reading lists.) But I wonder - how much reading exactly? Because it is an activity that could prove infinite - once you start, you just can't stop! I find myself while in the midst of a reading binge wanting to write, but, ultimately putting it off. Wait until this book is finished, which inevitable becomes another book and another book.

You may all have heard of and read the iconic textbook on creativity Julia Cameron's 'The Artist's Way' and found it inspirational, stimulating, encouraging to the highest strata. I loved it yes. I cherish it as one of the most inspirational guides to writing ever written, but there's just one component of it I had trouble with. And no it was not the controversial morning pages (I did groan at them but liked them), but rather the chapter where she urged us NOT TO READ. Yep, to effectively ban reading from our daily schedules for two weeks I think it was, so that our own ink could flow better. 

I never liked that idea, but I did try it. But my 'reading diet' only lasted for a while. I mean, how can you not read? She insisted it was because it could be a distraction to writing. The idea being that it's easier to read than write. Easy to pick up a book than a pen, a feather as opposed to a heavyweight. And I suppose, easy to get discouraged by all the greatness of literature to ever pick up a pen again. But really, easier to hide away in the already written word than to be the one out there forging it. All the better, she urges, to hear our own voice. I suppose she has a point. 

                                                              

I'm thinking of this now as I realise I've been doing a lot of reading lately. Because I let my reading slide for a long hiatus once, I am now even more determined to get stuck in.  I'm on Goodreads and love the challenge of trying to read 50+ books within a year. I deliberately took this number so I could read a book a week or thereabouts, a good balance I thought. But - big BUT - I have noticed that my writing time has suffered in the process. 

I'm not the only writer to feel like this. I came across a quote from Susan Sontag recently that echoes this feeling in a blunt admittance: "I read too much - as an escape from writing". In a Paris Review interview talking about how she gets started writing, she said: "Getting started is partly stalling, stalling by way of reading and of listening to music, which energizes me and also makes me restless." That's it exactly - reading energizes us, puts us in the take-off point for writing, but too much of it and not enough writing can indeed make us 'restless.' I often stall writing too by reading and listening to music. (At this point in the post, I have listened to a full album on repeat and read about five articles on Susan Sontag, not to mention a few other blogs AND found another book to order in the course of all that...)

I haven't written a lot in a while. My spare time has been more easily filled with books. And I suppose if you have the slightest bit of writing block, books can soon turn it into a Berlin Wall Blockade. They fill the hours with their quiet insistence and their word-worlds swarm around your head, leaving no room for burgeoning ones of your own. It's not so much a case of stage-fright when it comes to your own blank page, but more like so many words buzzing in your head it's hard to find your own in their (marvelous) cacophony.

Looking at the daily routines of famous writers, it is clear that they distinctly differentiate reading and writing, most to the strict tune of writing first - dawn or morning and reading second - evening usually, when all the 'work' is done. I wonder is there an optimum time for reading and an optimum time for writing? Or does it depend solely on mood or preference?  Is it better then to write in the daytime and read at night? Or what about your one precious hour of free-time - read or write? One is relaxing, the other invigorating. If I read at night, I sleep sound. If I write at night, I'm up all night, brain buzzing in a blizzard of words. I try to do both every day, ideally equally, but my pattern of late has been reading first, writing second. Or a few days binge reading and then binge writing. 

I have loved my reading time recently, but am missing my writing time. Maybe there is a limit that needs to be imposed in order to write at a more efficient pace. I'm thinking now maybe it is necessary, as Julia Cameron advised, to go cold turkey on reading in order to be in serious writing mode, well at least a little bit cold turkey. I suppose you can't  make headway on your novel while your head's down the rabbit hole of another book can you? 

The act of reading subconsciously preps the mind's terrain for the act of writing. It is fuel for the fire of writing. For this reason I feel, as all writers likely do, that the more I read, the better I will write and to this account, can end up reading for days and days without writing. But I'll admit the relative 'easiness' of it is a kind of luxury limbo I can fall into now and then. To drag myself out of it and actually put myself into writing mode again feels like dragging yourself out of a cosy warm bed in the morning, the duvet too much of a comfort to discard just yet, it being also an incubator for dreams. 

 

I read a really interesting article recently criticising MFAs in which the writer said something really evocative - that writers ('real writers' ahem) read from childhood so as to form the appropriate 'neural architecture' required for writing. Don't you just love that phrase?! From it I picture an inner Rococo mind with cascading columns on which cherubic angels of inspiration alight, crossed with a flickering neon super-accelerated sci-fi-like set. Writing is hard-wired into our minds alright and every new piece of literature we read adds another feature to this architecture. But it's important to realise that this neural architecture is there - waiting for us to start reaping its glories.

Whatever about a time to read and a time to write, there has to be a time to know when one over-arches into the other's territory. I remember the days of writing assignments at college in which there was an 'incubation period' first, usually 1-4 weeks, in which research was done and knowledge gleaned, a time to collect all the necessary content and stimuli.  And then, just like that, a time to stop and get down to the writing of it, a sort of D-Day of deliberation. You knew it when it happened: your own fully-formed opinions would pulse to be processed, ripe for the picking. To spend more time researching was a kind of cop-out, a faltering, a delusion and frankly, with a deadline looming - a danger. You were ready. It was now or never. I'm thinking it is the same for writing now, albeit with no deadline looming, except the personal ones. Now, it is even more imperative to impose those D-Days especially when you can lose the run of yourself in reading. To harness the 'energy' of reading as Susan Sontag put it, and dispel that 'restlessness.'
   

I wonder what is the process for other aspiring writers - how do you balance your reading with your writing? Should there be a balance? Do you go on occasional reading diets to feed your writing?  Advice appreciated! 

~Siobhán. 

Love Poems To Make You Smile (And Maybe Swoon)

Love poetry is of course, the jewel in poetry's crown. It is the main reason why many a poet first got into the tricky business of writing poems. I'm willing to bet that almost every one of us has attempted to write a love poem at least once in our lifetimes, if not for a Valentine's card then as a spontaneous diary scrawl, be it in a moment of mirth or stoic seriousness. As Plato said, 'at the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.' When love has assaulted our every sense, poetry is the only medium that is capable of relating and understanding. It can measure up in words to the glorious heights of feeling love inspires and as such, is proof proper of its power.

When I say 'love poem' I'm curious - what pops into your head? The cliched juvenile refrain of 'Roses are red, violets are blue' I bet? Or the reliable posturing of Shakespeare's 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day'?  Maybe Elizabeth Barrett Browning's 'How do I love thee? Let me count the ways'? It seems to  me that when we think of a love poem, it is nearly always an antiquated one with whorling sentiments galore, or an overly sentimental slushy thing that we should approach only with caustic cynical caution. But, I am here today to tell you, that needn't be the case. 

I'm so fed up with finding traditional love poems everywhere, from articles to anthologies with the usual suspects: Ben Jonson, John Donne, Byron, Shakespeare, Sir Philip Sydney, Cristina Rosetti, Shelley and the likes all trumpeting on about some airy-fairy notions of love in some trumped-up verse! As an English major, I am aware I may be committing some act of treason here, but as a truth-devoted opinionist, I feel it my duty to admit that these old traditional love poems just don't do it for me, or for that matter, a majority of readers. Well, some of them (like Keats) are just fine (and sublime) in moderation, but to have every article - 'Love Poems Everyone Should Know' (I'm looking at you The Times) - and love poem anthology saturated with them is just bloody tiresome at this stage! Not to mention a tad elitist and stuffy.  Especially when there are so many GREAT contemporary love poems out there, unanthologised and often unacknowledged. 

In comparison, these 'classic' love poems all sing to the same beat, like manufactured pop today (well they were a manufactured sort of genre back in the day). Hello editors - there are other love poems out there!! What are you trying to do - put people off reading poetry? Have them see love as something frilly and fluffy and farcey? Because face it, some of these old woo-some gems are simply boring, trite and puffed-up pomp.

Contemporary love poetry is a genre full of wit and originality. It is not so much concerned with generating feeling as more attesting to it, as subtly and surprisingly as possible. It doesn't spurn sentimentality; rather it transforms it into something more tangible and real.  No trumped-up embellishments here. It is genuine, born from real emotion not a competitive literary trend and therefore forced inspiration, and each poem, most especially, is marked by a personal testament that touches on love as a thing universally felt, but uniquely experienced. Tolstoy said 'there are as many types of love as there are hearts' and today's love poetry adheres and showcases this opinion. 

So I've picked out a few of my favourites to share with you here today on Valentine's Day, in an effort to convince any of you thinking that love poems are waffle to show you evidence of the contrary. And of course, to jump at the chance of showcasing more poetry on this blog (as always).

The first poem that pops into  my mind when I think of an 'original' love poem is this ode, by Kenneth Koch, a wonderfully inventive poet who always uses language in the most vivid way. Here he talks of how much he loves his lover, in an almost puzzling and flummoxing original set of comparisons:

To You - Kenneth Koch 

I love you as a sheriff searches for a walnut

That will solve a murder case unsolved for years

Because the murderer left it in the snow beside a window

Through which he saw her head, connecting with

Her shoulders by a neck, and laid a red

Roof in her heart. For this we live a thousand years;

For this we love, and we live because we love, we are not

Inside a bottle, thank goodness! I love you as a

Kid searches for a goat; I am crazier than shirttails

In the wind, when you’re near, a wind that blows from

The big blue sea, so shiny so deep and so unlike us;

I think I am bicycling across an Africa of green and white fields

Always, to be near you, even in my heart

When I’m awake, which swims, and also I believe that you

Are trustworthy as the sidewalk which leads me to

The place where I again think of you, a new

Harmony of thoughts! I love you as the sunlight leads the prow

Of a ship which sails

From Hartford to Miami, and I love you

Best at dawn, when even before I am awake the sun

Receives me in the questions which you always pose.

 

Don't you just love that line -  'I am crazier than shirttails in the wind'?! The whole poem is 
vivaciously vibrant in its choice of content and uncanny descriptions. There can be doubting 
its sincerity when the poet went to these lengths to describe something that has fallen into 
an one-size-fits-all description territory. The result is a fanfare of the fantastic potential of 
love to push boundaries and the exuberant feelings it evokes.

A poem that reminds me somewhat of this is a riff on the traditional Valentine's poem, from 

Ogden Nash. In it Nash,  another gung-ho stylist, compares how much he loves his lover not 
in the conventional sense, but on the flip side - in negative ccomparisons, citing all the pains 
and irritations in life. The effect is startlingly original, not to mention funny and clever. The 
rhyme adds to the overall humour:

To My Valentine -  Ogden Nash

More than a catbird hates a cat,
Or a criminal hates a clue,
Or the Axis hates the United States,
That's how much I love you.

I love you more than a duck can swim,
And more than a grapefruit squirts,
I love you more than a gin rummy is a bore,
And more than a toothache hurts.

As a shipwrecked sailor hates the sea,
Or a juggler hates a shove,
As a hostess detests unexpected guests,
That's how much you I love.

I love you more than a wasp can sting,
And more than the subway jerks,
I love you as much as a beggar needs a crutch,
And more than a hangnail irks.

I swear to you by the stars above,
And below, if such there be,
As the High Court loathes perjurious oaths,
That's how you're loved by me. 

To be loved 'more than a toothache hurts' is a love that can't be denied I suppose!  
Powerful, to say the least, ahem.

But wait, if you think that was blunt, have a look at this one from him: 

Reflections on Breaking The Ice - Ogden Nash

Candy
Is Dandy
But liquor
Is quicker. 

Indeed... You can't argue with that. 

A real love poem I think has to have one main ingredient: sincerity. And what's the best way 
to express sincerity? Simple language, ordinary scenario. In this poem by Wendy Cope, we 
encounter the effects of  love in the subtle realisation that the ordinary things of life have 
suddenly become extraordinary for the speaker, and the result is sheer gladness, a kind of 
citrus blaze:

The Orange - Wendy Cope  

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange—

The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave—
They got quarters and I had a half.

And that orange, it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.
This is peace and contentment. It’s new.

The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all the jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I’m glad I exist.

The simplicity of this poem is disarming. Wendy Cope is master of such affecting understatement. Another love poem of hers similar to this one is 'After the Lunch', which expresses the reality of love in the midst of the commonplace:

After the Lunch - Wendy Cope

On Waterloo Bridge, where we said our goodbyes,
The weather conditions bring tears to my eyes.
I wipe them away with a black woolly glove
And try not to notice I’ve fallen in love.

On Waterloo Bridge I am trying to think:
This is nothing. You’re high on the charm and the drink.
But the juke-box inside me is playing a song
That says something different. And when was it wrong?

On Waterloo Bridge with the wind in my hair
I am tempted to skip. You’re a fool. I don’t care.
The head does its best but the heart is the boss —
I admit it before I am halfway across.

Falling in love is perfectly rendered here. She doesn't mince words and there are no airs or graces to it. From this, the effect is all the more true and believable. Love not as some grand orchestra-strung event, but a 'jukebox inside playing a song', a homely kind of epiphany.

Speaking of fruit comparisons, how's this for a neat summing up of love? -

What Love Is Like - Piet Hein

Love is like

a pineapple, 

sweet and

undefinable.  

Is a pineapple undefinable? What about its prickly exterior? Hmm, there might be more metaphors to be got there... 

Another poem that shows a manifestation of love in the commonplace is Billy Collin's 'Love.' In it the narrator is witness to a love story playing out beside him on a train.  His deadpan factual observance of a young besotted boy and his muse gives way to a sort of miraculous revelation at the end:

Love - Billy Collins

The boy at the far end of the train car
kept looking behind him
as if he were afraid or expecting someone

and then she appeared in the glass door
of the forward car and he rose
and opened the door and let her in

and she entered the car carrying
a large black case
in the unmistakable shape of a cello.

She looked like an angel with a high forehead
and somber eyes and her hair
was tied up behind her neck with a black bow.

And because of all that,
he seemed a little awkward
in his happiness to see her,

whereas she was simply there,
perfectly existing as a creature
with a soft face who played the cello.

And the reason I am writing this
on the back of a manila envelope
now that they have left the train together

is to tell you that when she turned
to lift the large, delicate cello
onto the overhead rack,

I saw him looking up at her
and what she was doing
the way the eyes of saints are painted

when they are looking up at God
when he is doing something remarkable,
something that identifies him as God.

The poem ends with a resounding crescendo of love manifesting in the midst of the ordinary. Love, as a miraculous phenomenon, is easily believable here as compared to all of  those traditional wordy cooings. It's in the simple gestures of love, that its divine nature is to be caught.

But maybe you find these all a tad saccharine? Well contemporary love poems do take account of this entitled cynicism. Trust Margaret Atwood to debunk the romance, attacking the meaninglessness of the word 'love' itself:

Variations on The Word Love - Margaret Atwood

This is a word we use to plug
holes with. It's the right size for those warm
blanks in speech, for those red heart-
shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing
like real hearts. Add lace
and you can sell
it. We insert it also in the one empty
space on the printed form
that comes with no instructions. There are whole
magazines with not much in them
but the word love, you can
rub it all over your body and you
can cook with it too. How do we know
it isn't what goes on at the cool
debaucheries of slugs under damp
pieces of cardboard? As for the weed-
seedlings nosing their tough snouts up
among the lettuces, they shout it.
Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising
their glittering knives in salute.

Then there's the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It's not love we don't wish
to fall into, but that fear.
this word is not enough but it will
have to do. It's a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go. 

Yes, you might relate better to Mrs Atwood's sharp sentiments. You can't deny that it's not 
true or real - always refreshing traits when it comes to good love poetry. That description of 
love as a 'mouth that says O again and again in wonder and pain' is a pretty accurate 
description to me. 

Contemporary love poetry is nothing if not surprising.'The Kiss' from Stephen Dunn is 
maybe one of the most original love poems I've come across in a while, taking its inspiration 
from a typo, of all things:


The Kiss - Stephen Dunn

She pressed her lips to mind.
                                —a typo

How many years I must have yearned
for someone's lips against mind.
Pheromones, newly born, were floating
between us. There was hardly any air.

She kissed me again, reaching that place
that sends messages to toes and fingertips,
then all the way to something like home.
Some music was playing on its own.

Nothing like a woman who knows 
to kiss the right thing at the right time,
then kisses the things she's missed. 
How had I ever settled for less?

I was thinking this is intelligence,
this is the wisest tongue
since the Oracle got into a Greek's ear,
speaking sense. It's the Good,

defining itself. I was out of my mind.
She was in. we married as soon as we could.

A mind kiss - not that's something not to be dismissed. Marvelous musing.

Former American Poet Laureate Ted Kooser can do short and sweet love poems faultlessly. 
Sparingly, he creates little notes on love with a deft hand and endearing results.  This one 
particularly like:

Map of The World - Ted Kooser

One of the ancient maps of the world

is heart-shaped, carefully drawn

and once washed with bright colors,

though the colors have faded

as you might expect feelings to fade

from a fragile old heart, the brown map

of a life. But feeling is indelible,

and longing infinite, a starburst compass

pointing in all the directions

two lovers might go, a fresh breeze

swelling their sails, the future uncharted,

still far from the edge

where the sea pours into the stars.

Like this? You can read more of Ted Kooser's love poems over on my Poem a Day blog 
today. He has an entire collection of Valentine poems he's written over the years that 
showcase his ability to take anything and write a love poem about it, in the most unexpected 
ways. A keen  characteristic of love itself.

Another deftly written poem celebrating love is Alice Oswald's 'Wedding'. What I love about 
it is the soaring swinging language that evokes the effect of a lifting-off from the ground, in 
what is an imagined progression of love's evolution in a relationship. It speaks of  reeling 
heights, and the lanuage reels out to accomodate this, without being superfluous or 
overdone. Rather, tentative and revelatory to make a sublime finish:

Wedding - Alice Oswald

From time to time our love is like a sail
and when the sail begins to alternate
from tack to tack, it’s like a swallowtail
and when the swallow flies it’s like a coat;
and if the coat is yours, it has a tear
like a wide mouth and when the mouth begins
to draw the wind, it’s like a trumpeter
and when the trumpet blows, it blows like millions…
and this, my love, when millions come and go
beyond the need of us, is like a trick;
and when the trick begins, it’s like a toe
tip-toeing on a rope, which is like luck;
and when the luck begins, it’s like a wedding,
which is like love, which is like everything. 

So there you have it, a small selection that shows love poetry doesn't have to be a pompous 
affair or a bland bore!

There's probably so many more good love poems I've not mentioned here  - the popular and
unconventional 'Valentine' by Carol Ann Duffy is one that came to mind of course,  but I've 
posted it already on this blog so had to leave it out. EE Cumming's 'i carry your heart' too 
has become a popular staple of contemporary love poetry. If I've missed any of your 
favourites - please feel free to share them here and share the love.

Have a happy poetic Valentine's!


~Siobhán