In Which I Learn About Chinese Poetry

My roommate and I had a long discussion last night about poetry. I picked up a book of Li Po's poetry and showed it to her. She had no idea who I meant at first. His name is now translated as Li Bai--so once we got that figured out things went a little bit smoother. She learned to recite some of his poems in school. She emphasized the brevity of the poems. Each line is only five or so character, and there are only four or five lines... But each character has a rich connotative meaning that can be difficult to translate. She was very excited to see that, in one of the books I chose at random at the library, the poem was shown in the original Chinese characters on one page and the English translation across from it. We talked about some of the metric devices of poetry. In Chinese there are four different ways to end a word, different ways to emphasize a sound. These form a pattern rather like the scansion of poems in English. She diagrammed a poem for me and I recited something in iambic pentameter for her. There are aspects of poetry that are the same across cultures, and that makes me very happy. 

In Which I Reflect at Sunset

Sunset over the Iowa River:
Sometimes it feels like old friends are moving quickly and very far away. I miss the moment in time in which I felt close to them.
Reflections on the water:
There are traces of the people who once were, but they ripple, are distorted. Have I changed so much, as well?

In Which I am Sleep-deprived

It feels like there is never enough time to sleep. College students must manage their time carefully, reserving sufficient time for studying and socializing and eating...and sleeping always seems to come in last, for me at least. I am writing this in the morning after a night spent furiously typing, trying to finish answering question after question so that I could finally get to sleep. I think that something should feel out of whack when sleep is given the short shaft, but it just seems normal. It is what everyone around me does. There is never enough time for what needs to get done. I think that, after I graduate, I am going to take a week or two and sleep--nothing else, just sleep. Maybe more like a month. Jeeze.

In Which I Discuss the Poet Laureate

Natasha Trethewey is the US Poet Laureate for 2012-2013; she was named in June of this year. In April, she came to Iowa City as the Poet Laureate of Mississippi, as a Pulitzer Prize winner, and I attended a reading she gave.I liked her poetry, her smooth Southern drawl. But it took finding out that she had been named US Poet Laureate to get me to read some of her work. I picked up Native Guard, the collection of poems for which she was awarded the Pulitzer at a reading last night. I started reading after my 10:30 class finished--I read it through, then read it through again. I did not think it possible to say so much so coherently in only 46 pages--26 poems--3 sections--one remarkable work. Trethewey weaves her process of grieving the death of her mother into the narrative of a group of freed slaves who join the Union Army during the Civil War and produced a biting commentary on the tensions of race in Mississippi. There is one particular poem that floored me. It is in the third section, after she cleans out her mother's house, after the hard slog of the Native Guard. The repetition of the line ends is haunting. Is it too much? Or is exactly right? What exactly does her name mean to her, in the context of where she was born, where she lives now? Look at the consonance in the sixth line: slaves, slicing, glaze, leaving. The 'l' is a harsh sound here, not rolling or slick. Harsh and melancholy. And when the punctuation changes in the fifth stanza. Both lines are complete ideas. Are those facts, when she was born and how she was named, really certain? I would say that the use of self-enclosed lines tries to make it so, tries to convince us, but everything is thrown off by the last stanza. Natasha--the Russian name, meaning Christmas child, even in Mississippi. That throws a whole new layer of uncertainty over the identity of the poem's persona... I love that this gives me something beautiful to chew on...

Miscegenation

In 1965 my parents broke two laws of Mississippi;
they went to Ohio to marry, returned to Mississippi.

They crossed the river into Cincinnati, a city whose name
begins with a sound like sin, the sound of wrong--mis in Mississippi.

A year later they move to Canada, followed a route the same
as slaves, the train slicing the white glaze of winter, leaving Mississippi.

Faulkner's Joe Christmas was born in winter, like Jesus, given his name
for the day he was left at the orphanage, his race unknown in Mississippi.

My father was reading War and Peace when he gave me my name.
I was born near Easter, 1966, in Mississippi.

When I turned 33 my father said, It's your Jesus year--you're the same
age he was when he died. It was spring, the hills green in Mississippi.

I know more than Joe Christmas did. Natasha is a Russian name--
though I'm not; it means Christmas child, even in Mississippi.

Natasha Trethewey
From Native Guard

In Which I Freak Out a Bit

So... I have been looking at information on studying abroad in South Africa. It looks great and interesting and like nothing else I have ever done, but the I decided to check out the US State Department's site on South Africa...not so nice. The main thing seemed to be crime. I mean, there is crime in Chicago, but it is relatively easy to avoid it. I have never been the victim of a crime, so it all feels a bit unreal to me. I was also horrified by the percentage of the adult population affected by HIV/AIDS. It is amazing--and not in a good way. Is this worth it? I really hope so. I had a bit of a day dream the other day of browsing in a bookstore near the university, discovering contemporary African authors that I would never find in the US. There is a bit of uncertainty creeping into my well of enthusiasm... But I still think that it would be worth it.

In Which I Make Use of Poetic Diction

I watched the sun set over the river last night. There was a bank of clouds on the horizon, and the sun would glow around the edges, gilding the edges with gold. Then, as the sun sank further, there was a burst of pink grapefruit that dissolved gently into a dusky amethyst.
This would be considered poetic diction, which is not as positive as it might sound. Poetic diction is language that is predictably, cliche. I think I edge a bit too close to it for comfort sometimes. But then again, I never claimed to be a poet, as much as I might like to daydream.