A Poem for Holy Week

[mrstater]

It's been nice to see all the lovely poetry posts for National Poetry month. I thought I'd post one of my own favorites.

Comments

[lady_bracknell]

I'm not a big fan of old GMH, but this is lovely. I really like the almost breathless feel to it, as it canters towards the last lines.

[mrstater]

I adore Mr. Hopkins, and I just fell in love with this poem in my Victorian poetry class. Think his language choice is splendid, and I really love the bit about ooze and how it makes you think of primordial ooze, but the the last three lines just make me forget to breathe. :)

You should have a fic in the next half-hour or so. :)

[lady_bracknell]

The Victorians did know a thing or two about poetry.

I'm excited about my fic. Yours is...well, not started yet, but it will be soon ;).

[mrstater]

I loved my Victorian poetry class. I think it was my favorite, even though my prof gave me a B solely because I didn't amuse him. I was analyzing poetry! I didn't realize he expected me to be funny while doing it!

Hope the fic lives up to your hopes. :)

[lady_bracknell]

I really love some of the Romantics - although I think my favourite poetry era is between 1910 and 1935, especially First World War/Spanish Civil War poetry.

I remember getting a B for something - Introduction To Realism, or something, and being really melodramatic about it. 'Oh well why don't you just fail me'....

[mrstater]

I'm not so much for the Romantics. Love the Metaphysical Poets, equally for the religious poetry and the dirty poetry. And the mixed stuff is the very best. ;)

Oh, I was really pissed off about my B. I had all As in my major till that point, and was determined to stay that way. Didn't care so much about the Bs in Chem and Bio, because...Well, I was an English major. :)

[lady_bracknell]

The American college system really does confuse me, since over here, you pick three or four subjects at 16, and drop all the others, and by the time you get to uni, you're a specialist, most likely in one or two subjects. The thought of having had to do degree-level science really does scare me.

Love the Metaphysical Poets, equally for the religious poetry and the dirty poetry. And the mixed stuff is the very best. ;)

I think one of the best things about studying English is knowing where all the dirty bits are ;).

[mrstater]

I think it's completely stupid that you have to waste the time and money getting a well-rounded degree just because you're a liberal arts student. My science classes nearly killed me. Had a D in chemistry till I aced an exam that brought my average up.

Just summarizing and tagging your fic...

[lady_bracknell]

Hurray!

I think the thing that would have bugged me is having to study things you've got no interest in - I don't really see the point of taking a course in something just for the sake of it, and it seems odd to say to someone 'hey, you're great at English - here's a Chemistry class for you to take!'. I don't think you ever learn to your full potential like that. Talking to American PhD students too, it seems that over here we've got a lot more freedom to study what we want, and get left to our own devices much more. I think I'd have gone a bit mad in an American college (which makes me glad, for the first time, that I didn't manage to get onto an exchange programme, lol).

[mrstater]

It was ridiculous all the extra classes I had to take. I think I wound up with four PE classes, four semesters of German, three lab sciences, a math, two histories, anthropology, sociology, poly sci, geography, two Bible survey classes...Not to mention all the music courses from when that was my major, which they refused to substitute for humanities when I changed to a BA instead of an MA, so those just went down as electives... Didn't get to take nearly as much English as I wanted to. Especially not writing. And do I really know anything about any of those junk courses I took? No.

[lady_bracknell]

I think I only took 4 courses in my whole uni career that weren't English - I did two writing for theatre courses (which were classed as Performing Arts), one French, and one Introduction To Computing (which was mandatory). And although it was a lot of work to do that much English (and some weeks I had to spend so much money in the bookshop I could barely afford to eat), I always thought well, that's what I'm here for - to study English.

It's bizarre that in America you seem to be able to walk away with a degree in something, yet have spent almost as much time studying other things.

[mrstater]

My last semester I had all English classes, five of them, and nearly died with the workload, but it was the best semester I had of school. I certainly felt like all those stupid courses in other things were a waste of my time. (And money! It was the $90 science books that broke me every semester!)

[mrstater]

And...posted! Enjoy. :)