Semester So Far

My online course started off a tad rocky for me. I've never been all that great with reading articles and discussing them, but, with a little will power, I pushed through and am now on my second week of the course. We've started off with T.S. Eliot. When I read him in years past, it was always his poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I got that he was worried about growing old and dying, wondering if he dares to disturb the universe, or if he'll just go on as unnoticed as possible. I like the message, but I still found myself largely lost in a lot of his other images. I figured it would go the same with the poem for this week.

I heard him read the Prufrock poem from an old recording as an undergrad, and the way he read it has stuck with me ever since. When I read in Murray, all I could hear was T.S. Eliot reading my poem. Not sure why that bothered me, but you could probably come to your own conclusions if you listen to him reading it on youtube. I posted the video incase you want to hear what I mean:

Anyway, this week introduced me to his poem The Wasteland, which I've only ever read through excerpts. When I saw it on the reading list, I was like, Great. How in the world am I going to discuss this? I usually only feel like I'm half-understanding him. Well, it ended up being true for pieces of his poem, but I think I actually understood more than half of it, and I ended up loving it. I'm actually a lot fonder of Eliot than I thought myself to be before. The way he strings lines and stanzas together just sort of dazzles me sometimes, while also making me sort of unhappy.

And what a depressing poem, really, but I think it'll be the topic of my first response paper. I will also try not to make any Harry Potter references, but the Deathly Hallows and the story of the three brothers just seem so apparent to me in this stanza where the narrator wonders who the third is that he senses walking with him and his friend. He's never there when he takes count, but he can see him when he looks on down the road. That was probably my favorite stanza.

Death is always there, always waiting. How will we greet it?

But I try to relate Harry Potter to everything in my head. Even now, I want to reread the series again. That or The Hunger Games. I'm trying to control myself though. I have way too much else to do. Still, T.S. Eliot writes a great poem about death and destruction and life after war time.

As far as my tutorial goes with Blas, I'm a little less optimistic. I've written a few poems since I got home from Murray, but they've been all but complete crap so far. I don't know what's wrong with me. I let Adam read all my work before I submit it, and he read those and didn't like them, said they didn't sound like me. And they don't. I think now I'm trying too hard to condense my poems. I'll have to make myself write long lines again and then condense them. I don't know. I just haven't been feeling the muse. I've been pretty content really. I need something to emotionally stir me.

Aside from that, I've read a few of the books he assigned me, and I fell in love with What the Living Do by Marie Howe. This woman is amazing.

If I could just write like that, all of my problems would be solved, but then I guess I'd be Marie Howe and not myself, and it defeats the point. Anyway, if you have the slightest interest in poetry, I would recommend this book. It's just an amazing read, encompassing how the living deal with the dying and the dead, how we go on without them. It's pretty brilliant. I've tried to write a few poems about the dead myself, and I don't think I'm anywhere near as good at it. So I'm putting those poems aside for now.

The last poem I think I did successfully was loosely based on real events surrounding my uncle. I'm thinking of revisiting it, branching off somehow. He comes with plenty of his own great, unusual material, so it makes it easier to fabricate the rest. I don't want to overkill it though, so maybe I'll write a poem that has nothing to do with me or anyone I know. I just feel like I'm in a rut again. It's killing me. I hate wanting to write but not being able to. I need to get some new material, but where?