Monday reading notes: only all the poems
Overslept this morning, thanks to Daylight Savings Time (which I nonetheless adore) and to having stayed up past midnight, too wired from sending off a manuscript (yippee!) to sleep—or to read, for that matter. Fumbled at a crossword puzzle on my phone instead. Well, after talking at my poor exhausted husband for an hour.
So no early-morning reading for me today. And a whirl of a morning, catching up on the housework and garden work I’ve neglected these past weeks. It’s spring out there! Who knew! Loads and loads of freesia sweetening the air—almost knocked me over, the scent was so lovely and so unexpected. And the pink jasmine is blooming, and the lime tree and grapefruit (not as exciting as it sounds, those two—they don’t seem inclined to produce fruit, ever). Nasturtiums and sweet alyssum and loads and loads of lavender. I might have to live outside for a while. “I think your garden needs you, Mom,” said Rose only a little reproachfully. She’s right; the clover is overrunning everything, and let’s not even speak of the bermuda grass.
But inside, there was Spenser. We’re reading it in excerpts, with plot summary between the passages—Marshall’s English Literature for Boys and Girls is wonderful for this—if you, a 21st-century teenager, can forgive the condescending name. Today was great fun, as the girls kept spotting parallels to Narnia (Una happening upon the dancing fauns and satyrs, not to mention her devoted lion)—Rose or Beanie, which?, said “I think Lucy is supposed to be an Una, Mom.” And the description of St. George going forth unto the dragon’s darksome hole:
“And lookéd in: his glistering armour made
A little glooming light, much like a shade,
By which he saw the ugly monster plain…
Most loathsome, filthy, foul, and full of vile disdain.”
I thought of Bilbo and Smaug, but Beanie thought of Eustace. They know a lot about Tolkien’s literary credentials and influences from our Beowulf studies, and now they know about Lewis’s too. You can’t help but see it, reading Spenser.
Oh, and we returned to our Poetry 180 journey, poem #8, “Numbers” by Mary Cornish.
Now, during all this poetry-reading, Rilla was perched in her usual spot at the kitchen table, drawing, and suddenly she flitted across to the shelves behind my rocking chair and started piling up books—mostly volumes from our Poetry for Young People collection, plus Child’s Garden of Verses. Later, I found this pile on my bed. She informed me gravely that she has decided to be a poet as well as an artist, “and I’m going to need to study everything about poetry. All the poems, and the poets’ lives, and everything.”
All the poems. Well, then. No time to lose. We began with Sandburg, at her request—his “Between Two Hills” is her favorite. And then a bit of Poe (we are incapable of saying his name without belting “Poe, Edgar Allen, American poet, born in eighteen hundred and nine…“). She liked the Raven but deemed it “too long” (I can’t disagree) and said she prefers poets like Emily Dickinson who “tell a whole story in a short little poem.” I can’t argue with that, either.
tanita says:
Yay, congratulations! I, too, just turned in a manuscript (fingers crossed!) and I feel like I missed a lot in the interim… you can tell, though – we both go silent for a bit, then resurface.
I am so envious of your flowers. I have empty pots… just never got around to filling them. Yet…
On March 11, 2014 at 6:37 am
kortney says:
oh, thank you for the Spenser direction…a gaping hole in my education that i was itching to fill! here, we’ve been tracing Narnia through Norse myth + Viking tales. i’m with Rilla on the short poems too.
we’ll be in San Diego next week….freesia!
and good work on the book : )
On March 11, 2014 at 2:45 pm
Melissa Wiley says:
Kortney, how fun! If you’re in East County, you should give me a holler! 🙂
Tanita, mega congrats to you! I saw your mention of rewriting the ending the other day and smiled to think we were on a similar schedule. Well, a pained, panicked smile—the best I could muster at that point in time. Is this one with Knopf again? If so, our manuscripts may be down the hall from each other right this minute. 🙂
On March 11, 2014 at 4:13 pm
Melanie B says:
I’ve never read Spencer, but you make me want to. Maybe when we get there we’ll check it out. And I think I need to get Marshall’s English Literature for Boys and Girls. We enjoyed her Beowulf and I just got Robin Hood.
On March 12, 2014 at 7:11 pm