To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield

April is poetry month.  Something that even this prosaic blogger remembers and likes to blog about every April.

Poetry speaks to the emotional beings that we are.  I did not realize the emotional appeal of poems until I was well into adulthood, as a working stiff in the US.  I went to a poetry reading.  The poet was a local boy who had made it big on the other coast.  As the middle-aged poet read lines from his poem, it hit me: This is what poetry is about!  Those lines spoke to me, which is what we expect from good poetry.

Since then, I have come to realize that when the right person reads a great poem, oh boy, it is as if the mysteries of the universe are being solved.  One word at a time, and one verse at a time.

We collectively experienced that when we listened to Amanda Gorman reading her poem at President Biden's inauguration.  When her reading ended, we wanted more.  Remember?

As Margaret Renkl writes in the NY Times:

Thank God for our poets, here in the mildness of April and in the winter storms alike, who help us find the words our own tongues feel too swollen to speak. Thank God for the poets who teach our blinkered eyes to see these gifts the world has given us, and what we owe it in return.

Thank god, indeed!

The title of this post is from the final stanza of Lord Tennyson's Ulysses.   Ulysses reaches Calypso’s island, exhausted after a shipwreck.  The goddess Calypso offers herself to Ulysses and also promises him immortality.  Think about this: The most beautiful woman ever and immortality.

Ulysses turns down the offer.

He then heads to the high seas.  An unknown expanse of adventure.

Ulysses wanted to live a life that he would not regret.

Tennyson writes:

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

I wish us all well with the chances that we take, and may we never have to regret the chances we didn't, and don't, take!

Do you know anyone who has read Ulysses from cover to cover?

Let's see if this cartoon tickles you ... at least half as much as how funny it was to me:

Source

Maybe the book was James Joyce's Ulysses! ;)

Every time I read an essay in which the author makes references to Joyce and Ulysses it is only to make a point that it is insanely difficult to go past even a few pages of that book.

Like this writer from a few years ago, who spoke the truth, during his graduate schooling, to his Joyce scholar professor: "If I had to choose between rereading Ulysses or Tarzan of the Apes, I'd go for Tarzan."

Yet, when we list our summer reading lists, even the wish lists, it is not the likes of Tarzan that we think of but the heavy ones like Ulysses.  What's up?  I like this take:

Of course, we tackle more elaborate books in summer because we have more time on our hands, with the season’s longer days, the time off from work, and the promise of leisure in the air. But there’s also a psychological effect at work. From our childhood days, the coming of summer and the end of the school year meant the end of our “required” reading: no more homework, no more chapter assignments, no more mandatory synopses of The Scarlet Letter or historical summaries of “Everyday Life in Dickens’ London.” Come the solstice, many of us experienced something that will never disappear: the exhilaration of setting our own literary agenda—a private summer syllabus devoid of grades and fueled by love alone.

For once, it is not about the grades.  Not because it is a required reading. It is love.

But the reality is that I rarely ever run into people anymore who want to talk about the books that they are reading or plan to read.  It is almost as if a vast majority does not read books anymore.  Neither here nor in the old country.  Maybe there really never was a book-reading culture and it was only a few who read?

This coronavirus summer that preempts travel should, logically speaking, give me plenty of time to read serious books and blog about them.  Even Ulysses!

But, life is illogical, for the most part ;)  I don't have a list of books for this summer.

This Tarzan will, however, continue to read, think, and blog.

Academic bait-and-switch

An excerpt from the last of a three-part essay:

On the first day of a session devoted to Joyce's Ulysses, Dr. Quentin began by saying, "Describe your reading experience. Please feel free to tell me what it was really like."
"I felt in awe," said Marcus, who sat at Dr. Quentin's immediate left. "Joyce is such a genius. His mastery of language and craft is unsurpassed."
"The best novel I've ever read," said Lucy. Her comment struck me as odd, because in the cafeteria earlier that day she'd called reading Ulysses her worst experience ever.
And so it went.
I didn't doubt Joyce's genius, but the comments of my colleagues annoyed me. Dr. Quentin had asked us to discuss our reading experience, not dance like the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. I assumed he wanted a serious discussion of the challenges that the novel poses for the first-time reader, so I said, "Joyce is clearly brilliant, but if we are discussing the reading experience itself, I didn't enjoy Ulysses at all."
Dr. Quentin's mouth fell open. So did the mouths of all 11 of my fellow graduate students. No one made a sound until Marcus said, "Henry, I don't know quite know how to interpret your statement."
Marcus was tossing me a life preserver, but I swam farther out to sea. Since Dr. Benjamin had used King Kong to explain The Faerie Queene, I assumed I could do something similar. "If I had to choose between rereading Ulysses or Tarzan of the Apes, I'd go for Tarzan."
Excruciatingly calmly, Dr. Quentin said, "You and I will talk after class."

At least I did not ever have to pretend that I read Ulysses, leave alone pretending that I enjoyed it. I think I gave it three good attempts, but never progressed beyond the first couple of pages.