A Visionary Gleam

Well, once again, that line from the film (now nearly 25 years old!) Field of Dreams: "if you build it they will come." Will you? Well, Curtis has already been here, getting the Blake discussion going, so that's a good sign (and do feel free to continue his thread by adding comments to his post). In any event, I thought it would be a good idea to create a kind of electronic parlor room, an overflow vestibule, where we might share and collect some thoughts, observations, and questions that elude the headlong rush of our 50-minute class periods. No need to be formal, necessarily -- in fact, a dash of irreverence now and then would be a good thing, I'm sure!

Had we had time this past Monday (especially since it relates to my question to you about assessing your relationship to poetry in one word), I might have read this poem by Billy Collins. There's some instructional value in here regarding waterskiing and feeling around for light switches:

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem


and hold it up to the light

like a color slide 



or press an ear against its hive.



I say drop a mouse into a poem


and watch him probe his way out,



or walk inside the poem's room


and feel the walls for a light switch. 
 


I want them to waterski


across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore. 


But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope


and torture a confession out of it.



They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

We'll start rather gently with the most accessible of Blake's poems; their forms are comforting and recognizable, even if, content-wise, and especially in the benighted poems of the Songs of Experience, there's of course much caustic fervor and moral indignation for us to contemplate. See you tomorrow -- and, once again, I'm looking forward to working with all of you this semester!