Day: March 16, 2010

Atop A Foothill

mayiwrite my life , , ,

I have a better idea of the vista at the summit.

Which, now, is just over three semesters away.

***

I don’t know if I can pull my history grade up to an A from a B.

I don’t know if I can pull my French grade up to an A from an A-.

My other two classes I’m not too worried about.

I talked with a professor today about classes I’m trying to decide on.

I meet with my advisor tomorrow.

I spoke with another professor a few weeks ago about life plans.

I would love to write short stories and essays for literary journals.

It would also probably be helpful to teach.

Right now, I’m pondering a contemporary adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello with a group from one of my classes. We’re piecing together the scene on Thursday and performing it next Tuesday.

I’m also thinking about Ernest Hemingway and how much I liked reading “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” for history class. It has some of the most beautiful writing I’ve ever read.

There’s a quiz in French tomorrow.

I have to write a response paper on the acquisition of knowledge as it pertains to Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia.

Sometimes I wish I could just be done with school.

But, I’d have nowhere else to go.

At least not now.

I Really Like This One, Too

mayiwrite miscellany , ,

“September, 1918“ by Amy Lowell

This afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight;
The trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves;
The sidewalks shone like alleys of dropped maple leaves,
And the houses ran along them laughing out of square, open
       windows.
Under a tree in the park,
Two little boys, lying flat on their faces,
Were carefully gathering red berries
To put in a pasteboard box.


Some day there will be no war,
Then I shall take out this afternoon
And turn it in my fingers,
And remark the sweet taste of it upon my palate,
And note the crisp variety of its flights of leaves.
To-day I can only gather it
And put it into my lunch-box,
For I have time for nothing
But the endeavour to balance myself
Upon a broken world.
***
Sorry, people. This one totally blew me away.

Sort of My Mood This Morning

mayiwrite miscellany , ,

“Mid-day” by Hilda Doolittle

The light beats upon me.
I am startled–
a split leaf crackles on the paved floor–
I am anguished–defeated.

A slight wind shakes the seed-pods–
my thoughts are spent
as the black seeds.
My thoughts tear me,
I dread their fever.
I am scattered in its whirl.
I am scattered like
the hot shrivelled seeds.

The shrivelled seeds
are spilt on the path–
the grass bends with dust,
the grape slips
under its crackled leaf:
yet far beyond the spent seed-pods,
and the blackened stalks of mint,
the poplar is bright on the hill,
the poplar spreads out,
deep-rooted among trees.

O poplar, you are great
among the hill-stones,
while I perish on the path
among the crevices of the rocks.

***

Not an uplifting poem, but the imagery pleases me. My mind is too jumbled right now to produce something of my own. The poem happens to be reading for a class.