An evening of 'poetry'
Yesterday was actually my birthday. For the last few years I've not done anything on my birthday, and just eaten takeaway at home by myself (even my flatmates have been away for various reasons) and told myself not to cry. The thing is, if you're single and you live in a city where you have no family, if you don't organise your own birthday no-one else is going to organise it, or have you round for dinner, and if you're an introvert who doesn't especially like 'spotlight on me' occasions, you don't always feel like throwing yourself a party. But this year I thought I would get out of myself and do something. So, I asked some people over for something I like to do: an evening of port and poetry.
The idea was that you bring a poem (song lyrics included, as I realise not so many people read poetry these days) you like/wrote etc to share. I got very mixed reactions to this idea. In the past I have done it with only about half a dozen people or so, and they have been great nights. Last night I had a few more people, most of whom were less into poetry than those of times past, and it was perhaps a little shaky in places near the beginning, but it worked. One girl surprised us all by reading a beautiful poem she wrote for her best friend's 21st birthday, one fellow read us the lyrics of a Nick Drake song, then later sang us a song he wrote himself (hats off to people game enough to sing! - and he claimed that while he performs regularly he's never sang to a little group of people like that before and was glad he did), one other girl, who really wasn't keen on my idea, sang us a song that she and a close flatmate used to sing together, another played us a song in Spanish (and translated it!) that meant something to her, then we had John Donne's Prayer for Violence and also a snippet from a John Donne's sermon (the 'bell tolls' portion), and there was Clancy of the Overflow, Robert Frost, extracts from My Fair Lady, Sting lyrics, and so it went on ... and something does start to happen as people begin offering a little tiny explanation of why they chose what it is they are sharing ... I like it! And it was interspersed with a whole lot of laughter, so by no means has to be a serious occasion (at the very first one of these nights that I hosted I thought I was going to die laughing, because one participant was so hilarious).
One girl, who's about the most 'out there' person who came, commented after most had gone home on how you feel strangely exposed reading out your choice, yet in a good way. Therein lies the potential difficulty of such a thing, in that I think it's the pressure of feeling that what you choose is going to 'mean' something about you that some don't like ... so you have to try to not create that pressure, and not act as though it's all too loaded with meaning or take it too seriously, but you discover that most people actually do want to be known, and share something, eventually, and you get to know a little more about people either way (even if that's that they'd rather not).
So, I was a little deadly serious and sombre in my choice, but decided that as this group of people probably had not come across it before, I'd read what I'd consider my 'signature poem', if I were to have one, which features in my blog header. So I read these four sonnets from Later Life by Christina Rossetti (they've been on this blog before, but I discover that was in 2007!). And my new toy, my fire pit, burned brightly away outside on the balcony (and our whole loungeroom wall is glass, so even when we were inside it was a nice glow just feet away).
6.
We lack, yet cannot fix upon the lack:
Not this, nor that; yet somewhat, certainly.
We see the things we do not yearn to see
Around us: and what see we glancing back?
Lost hopes that leave our hearts upon the rack,
Hopes that were never ours yet seemed to be,
For which we steered on life’s salt stormy sea
Braving the sunstroke and the frozen pack.
If thus to look behind is all in vain,
And all in vain to look to left or right,
Why face we not our future once again,
Launching with hardier hearts across the main,
Straining dim eyes to catch the invisible sight,
And strong to bear ourselves in patient pain?
7.
To love and to remember; that is good:
To love and to forget; that is not well:
To lapse from love to hatred; that is hell
And death and torment, rightly understood.
Soul dazed by love and sorrow, cheer thy mood;
More blest art thou than mortal tongue can tell:
Ring not thy funeral but thy marriage bell,
And salt with hope thy life’s insipid food.
Love is the goal, love is the way we wend,
Love is our parallel unending line
Whose only perfect Parallel is Christ,
Beginning not begun, End without end:
For He Who hath the Heart of God sufficed,
Can satisfy all hearts, - yea, thine and mine.
11.
Lifelong our stumbles, lifelong our regret,
Lifelong our efforts failing and renewed,
While lifelong is our witness, “God is good:”
Who bore with us till now, bears with us yet,
Who still remembers and will not forget,
Who gives us light and warmth and daily food;
And gracious promises half understood,
And glories half unveiled, whereon to set
Our heart of hearts and eyes of our desire;
Uplifting us to longing and to love,
Luring us upward from this world of mire,
Urging us to press on and mount above
Ourselves and all we have had experience of,
Mounting to Him in love’s perpetual fire.
12.
A dream there is wherein we are fain to scream,
While struggling with ourselves we cannot speak:
And much of all our waking life, as weak
And misconceived, eludes us like the dream.
For half life’s seemings are not what they seem,
And vain the laughs we laugh, the shrieks we shriek;
Yea, all is vain that mars the settled meek
Contented quiet of our daily theme.
When I was young I deemed that sweets are sweet:
But now I deem some searching bitters are
Sweeter than sweets, and more refreshing far,
And to be relished more, and more desired,
And more to be pursued on eager feet,
On feet untired, and still on feet tho’ tired.
Christina Rossetti Later Life: A Double Sonnet of Sonnets
