☥ 6th. {text} she sits down to her coloured thread

[quiesquietis]

Dear City

Comments

[adamantined]

I don't really get poetry. I mean, I've tried but it always just kind of feels like you're trying to find the meaning behind words that someone just threw together to make something sound pretty.

But... have you ever read The Buried Life by Matthew Arnold?

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[quiesquietis]

That's always the concern.

"Alas! is even love too weak
To unlock the heart, and let it speak?
Are even lovers powerless to reveal
To one another what indeed they feel?"

A few times, yes.

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[adamantined]

It was especially a concern when I was being graded on it.

I like the end.

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[quiesquietis]

Oh, of course.

This will sound trite, I worry, but can you say what it is that you like about it?

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[adamantined]

I don't think it sounds trite, but it is very teacher of you.

And I don't know how to explain it really. It's just like... he's been living and running for so long and then finally there's a break in it. And he can see the beginning, and he can see the end. It's a weirdly optimistic perspective.

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[quiesquietis]

Ah, yes. My usual affliction.

So there's meaning to that poem to you. I agree, the end does have that tone. And it's very much concerned with love.

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[adamantined]

Isn't there supposed to be meaning in every poem? Otherwise it's just a bunch of words someone threw together.

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[quiesquietis]

I thought that's what you meant by reading meaning into words thrown together to sound pretty?

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[adamantined]

I know, I was just... trying to make a joke.

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[quiesquietis]

It's a joke with an excellent point, though. I don't think anyone can deny some poetry is...frankly rather bad and designed only to seem insightful, rather than actually being that way. For example, anything I wrote in the throes of adolescence. I worry it's discouraging, although the fact that you sought out and remember Matthew Arnold anyway seems to belie that concern.

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[adamantined]

To be fair, it was just something that I remember reading at one point. Most of the things that I've tried to understand or find some kind of meaning in do just sound like random words. Unless we're talking about Shel Silverstein, because everyone knows there's meaning in The Giving Tree.

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[quiesquietis]

That book.

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[adamantined]

Is still perfect years later.

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[quiesquietis]

It made me cry the first time I read it. And the second.

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[adamantined]

Fortunately my mom got it for me, and I read it in the comfort of my own home. Otherwise my street cred would have gone down a lot.

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[quiesquietis]

I hope you didn't take relationship advice from it. I did. A very bad idea.