Category: Poets

A Prayer for Old Age

A PRAYER FOR OLD AGE

GOD guard me from those thoughts men think

In the mind alone;

He that sings a lasting song

Thinks in a marrow-bone;

From all that makes a wise old man
That can be praised of all;
0 what am I that I should not seem
For the song’s sake a fool?

I pray-for fashion’s word is out
And prayer comes round again
That I may seem, though I die old,
A foolish, passionate man.
Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats

Here’s another Yeats’ poem that I didn’t really appreciate until recently, perhaps because old age didn’t seem too relevant until now. I suspect, though, that what Yeats seeks in all of his poems are eternal values that can guide our entire life.

Although it is common for Romantic poets to emphasize intuition over logic, to emphasize heart over mind, there does seem to be a certain irony in a man who has devoted his life to letters condemning men whose thoughts are ‘in the mind alone."

I suspect, though, that this is an ambivalence that haunts many of us who enjoy studying ideas and reading literature. Too often literature seems a form of escape rather than a solution to lifeâs problems. Itâs easier to read a romantic novel than it is to build real love in your life. Itâs certainly easier to analyze politics than it is to effect real change in our society. No matter how many environmental books you read, the environment continues to degrade.

As a literature teacher, I was often accused of promoting this. Many students found literature irrelevant, and it was extremely difficult to show them the relevance if they didn’t already see it. Despite my occasional sarcastic remarks that I would hate to marry a person who couldnât even understand the motivation for a character in a novel, too often I felt unable to show students how these ideas were relevant to their lives.

Nor am I denying that reading for escapism isn’t sometimes necessary. My best friend sent me a copy of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 to read while I was stationed in Vietnam. Although this later became one of my favorite 20th century novels, I could barely get through two chapters. Instead, I repeatedly read passages from the Rubiat of Omar Khayyam, a work I haven’t read since.

Still, I would argue that the major goal of reading and thinking should be to empower your life, not avoid it. Reading and thinking should enrich your life, make you happier, and give you the understanding you need to cope with an increasingly complex world. They should unite you with your world, not alienate you from it.

Most of all, though, they should create a passion for life that, no matter how foolish it may appear to others, provides meaning to your life.

Politics

‘In our time the destiny of man presents its meaning in
political terms!–THOMAS MANN
How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?
Yet here’s a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there’s a politician
That has read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war’s alarms,
But 0 that I were young again
And held her in my arms!
Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats

After a week spent living in the moment and trying to keep the little guy laughing, not crying, I’m finding it difficult to suddenly switch back to "reality."

Thus, I was happy to find links to Pretty Faces Get Men’s Brains Going: Study at wood s lot

Simply put, if you have to start thinking again, it’s much easier to start thinking about girls than it is to think about Afghanistan, the Florida ballot, or, particularly, the airplane crash in New York that greeted me when I re-encountered the "real world" by turning on the television this morning.

A week taking care of a one-year-old didn’t actually make me think about girls, but it did make me think about what it means to be young again.

And for a short while, I could recapture the wonder of seeing things in a new light when we spent fifteen minutes walking ten feet while picking up and discarding fallen leaves in order to find the "perfect" leaf, perfect, at least, until we decided to drop it ten minutes later because we wanted "up." Nothing’s too precious to let go of in a new moment.

What a wonder this world is when you can see it in new ways, whether itâs from the top of a slide sitting next to a child who finds the descent to earth terrifying, even if it is only five feet away, or from a swing, where the world seems in constant motion.

Up close and personal, the world is a miraculous place if we allow it to be.

The Real Job

While sitting down and writing blog entries this week, I realized just how magical my undergraduate years at the University of Washington were. In four short years I was exposed to a variety of poets whose ideas have influenced me the rest of my life.

By my senior year, however, I was more than ready to move on with the rest of my life (if I had realized that Vietnam was next, I might have been less anxious to move on). Tired of working my way through college as a janitor, I just wanted to finish school and get a ãreal job,ä too young to realize that attaining "self-awareness" is life’s real job.

Of all the poetry teachers I had, Welsh poet Vernon Watkins, a guest professor for one quarter, may have been my favorite because his classes seemed like friendly discussions rather than lectures from above.

Amazingly, you could actually visit him during office hours and have a discussion with him without feeling that you were interrupting his day. For instance, after he questioned my interpretation of a line in Yeats’ "Crazy Jane Meets the Bishop," a personal favorite I had memorized years before, I went to talk to him in his office, and he not only raised my grade, he spent an hour talking about Yeatsâ poetry. That may have been my most memorable hour as an undergraduate.

Perhaps "Demands of the Poet" captures a little of the sensitivity and passion that Vernon Watkins conveyed in his classes.


Demands of the Poet

I set my heart against all lesser toil.
Speak to me now more closely than the birds.
That labour done, on which I spent my oil,
Avails me nothing till you test the words.

How much the beating pulse may hold the years
Yet write the athletic wisdom on the page
You alone say. You bring the authentic tears
Which recognize the moment without age.

No lesser vision gives me consolation.
Wealth is a barren waste, that spring forgot.
Art is the principle of all creation,
And there the desert is, where art is not.
Vernon Watkins in Affinities

It takes remarkable humility for a poet to feel that the reader, and not he himself, determines the success of the poem and that until the reader tests the truth of his words, the poem has no real use.

And, yet, the same poet sets a lofty goal for himself because he believes that only the artistâs creation can keep the world from being barren and sterile.

I like to think, at least, that my communion with artists and their works has made my own life less barren and sterile.