Donne from the "Whispers of Mortality." This wasn't from the book I read, but it relates to the last two poems. He is a metaphysical poet. Metaphysical poetry was a literary movement in the 1600s. Poets shifted how they expressed themselves. They used exaggerated and grotesque comparisons, often regarding love, religion, and death. Their investigations were through witty and rational discussions versus mystical expressions. A key literary device used by the metaphysical poets was conceits which are symbols beyond their meaning into philosophical symbols. In one sentence, metaphysical poets used crazy metaphors to investigate love, death, and religion in a rational and philosophical manner.
I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.
And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.
The first two lines jumped out at me to start. When I was in junior high I started reading every book Nicholas Sparks had on the market....10 years later and I have read each of his newest books on opening day and have completed his entire series. But, as each year passes, I find myself enjoying his books less and less. And this year I finally wondered and discovered why. He tends to paint a picture of the love we all want to believe in, especially when we are young, but never really tend to find. But not, of course, because we aren't looking...it is because to define love in his way is to truly miss out on the beauty that our current relationships tend to offer. I have been learning that people do not mold to a definition of love, but that we learn to love my better understanding who each person really is. There seems to exist a very small variable of Nicholas Sparks beginnings, but there certainly may be more Nicholas Sparks endings...if we allow them to exist. Become our own author, I suppose.
ReplyDeleteAnyway!! The picture of these two souls in the poem coming together really moved me. I wish this idea could be a painting in my living room- two independent lives meeting without really knowing that from that point forward they will never again be the same. A new soul, a new perspective. All it takes is one new view and the whole world changes!!! What is the thing that changed me today, you say!?!?!? Robert Frost always gets all the credit for his diversion of paths, but man, the imagery there has always been so cool to me there as it is here.
The comparison of on previous knowledge dulling when new love unveils more is neat. We go through life with so many present truths...and then they change. I was thinking about how many places you have been, how many different people you have been in the last 10 years and it just floors me. Marine, PC, grad student, teacher, poet, etc. funny how my mind initially categorized you in your occupation- your task- categorize yourself by your mindset in these same time periods...
"And makes one little room an everywhere"...I didn't catch this thought..
"And makes one little room an everywhere"
DeleteIs nowhere else important when you are madly in love as the narrator is? Being madly in love makes everything better, or nothing else matter. Love is a drug. It releases all those feel good hormones just like a good drug. He is sky high on love.
The poem expresses how awesome it is to be in love. Two people coming (pun) together (or at least that is how the narrator perceives it) and being in love. They see each other in their eyes, literally and figuratively.
The ideas about the mortality of their love ties back to the other poems. There has to be balance. Then they can live taught as one soul (hopefully for the narrator's sake she feels the same). I don't buy it; the idea or the other lovers feelings, but that's cool.
Your commment, "being madly in love makes everything better, or nothing else matter" just got transcribed into my journal...and I keep rereading it.
ReplyDeleteKudos on the pun.
I am curious then- what then, is your idea of love? Do you agree with the idea of American marriage?
What a tough question. Love... I'll get back to you. For now, love is a feeling that words do not clarify well enough.
DeleteAmerican marriage is a joke to me. Americans are a joke to me too.
I just reread your comment on American marriage. A few months back I read "Committed" by Elizabeth Gilbert (technically a sequel to eat, pray, love) and after her first marriage ended she decides that she no longer believes in marriage at all. Her books talks about the history of American marriage versus other marriages in the world (real interesting!) and after going back and forth and back and forth, she ends up deciding to marry the man she had a love affair with in Bali at the end of her Eat Pray Love memoir... but strictly on the terms of granting him access to American soil to be able to be with him and not have to visa their way through their relationship.
ReplyDeleteI, too, find marriage something that is far away from any truth that I have yet come to know- actually very far from it. Binding anything scares the daylights out of me...especially something like love which feels like the definition of freedom itself. Marriage seems predictable, blind, unaware, and unthoughtful...all things that I hope my relationship never is. A contract is only sexy when its about sex, not love!
Goal: how to be less American in America
"How to be less American in America?"
ReplyDeleteWhat an American thing to do, haha.