2014, A Christmas Poem

Season of stars,

diamonds piled up on the doorstep

and frost growing like fur on streetlamps.

Light from the houses around reflects off the snow,

marred only by footprints and the remnants of play.

Christian or no, this is the season of love,

of fireplaces and cookies,

songs and family,

presents and light.

Christmas lights the Earth softly,

spreading to pinch our cheeks pink

and shining from our eyes.

Maybe We Shouldn't Read Poetry

I think we may be approaching this poetry thing all wrong.

Way back in the day, poetry was some blind dude telling you stories (Homer). These days, we think of it as a column of words in a book you read. I'm not talking about content. I couldn't care less whether poets are talking about sunsets, wheelbarrows, people in jail, or whatever else is on their minds.

When Homer was around, people absorbed poetry. It was a primary form of entertainment and history, something that brought people to their feet, cheering (or so I imagine, anyway. I wasn't there). These days, you kind of nod to yourself and turn the page. If you're that girl in a poetry class I took, you make a copy of it and hang it on your wall. I once took someone's magnet words, found on their refrigerator, and rearranged some into the sentence, "My memory walks upon sunsets in wonder." Poetic, no? Some people would argue it doesn't mean anything. I would argue it's pretty.

A poetic sentence on a refrigerator is as useful as the cherry blossom trees on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. I've heard they look beautiful when they bloom, and they are all over the place. They probably make some people stop, take a picture, post it to their Facebook.

But it's only refrigerator poetry.

Those cherry blossom trees don't provide cherries. And they also don't smell. They look pretty, but they don't embrace their potential as cherry trees (I'm ignoring biology, stay with me here). A line of poetry on your refrigerator doesn't change your life. A column of text in a book can, but it's unlikely. That's because you shouldn't read poetry.

Poetry should be listened to.

It should be absorbed through the skin and the ears, you should want to repeat the words to taste them on your mouth. If you go to YouTube, you can see poetry while you hear it, watch images swell beneath the words spoken aloud. I highly recommend this use of YouTube.

Poetry is part music. It is what gave birth to lyrics, and it is a sibling of written prose. We should be able to hear that music--the stressed syllables, the sounds of the letters, the pauses and tempo switches--while we soak in the meaning of the words. That's when you're doing poetry right. If you aren't listening to it, you are getting only half the poem. You're getting a cherry blossom tree instead of a full cherry tree.

I realized this only just the other day, after being told it by nearly all my English professors in college. This video is what brought it to me. Think how weak this poem would be, in comparison, if it were read silently. Perhaps if we were taught in school to listen to poetry, instead of taught to read it, we would enjoy it more. Perhaps things would be just a little bit different.

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Joseph Heller

Almost a month since my last post, but here's my excuse: I got engaged! After dating on and off for years, and after Tyler has served a mission for our church, we are finally going to get married. The planning has taken over my life, and what free time I have I give to a manuscript I'm editing.

Tyler and me

I haven't even been able to read. I checked out a book and after renewing it once and still not finding time to read more than the first two or three pages, I decided to return it. The good news is that I have found a venue and a dress, we figured out the menu, and we have a florist, photographer, and my hairdresser all lined up. Things are calming down a little bit, so I have time to write this post.

The other good news is that while I haven't been reading, I still have to commute to work and I was able to listen to Joseph Heller's Catch-22 while I drove. So no, I wasn't completely deprived.

Besides my usual reason of wanting to be well read, I decided to listen to Catch 22 because nothing else at that particular library looked good and because I've never completely understood "Catch-22" as a phrase. It's a phrase used regularly in English, and I only had a hazy idea what it meant. So I guess you could say I listened to this book to improve my English fluency.

Turns out this is what a Catch-22 is.
The world makes sense again.

I was listening to one CD from this book for a while before I looked over at the player and saw that it was set to random and I had been listening to it out of order. That's something you would normally realize straight off, but the fact that it took me so long lets you know just how random this book is. I didn't feel out of the loop, and I had been getting the story out of order. Another time, I thought it must be set on random, because I was a bit confused, but it wasn't. I turned it back a track and kept an eye on it and sure enough, I hadn't missed anything.

For that reason, and because it is written in vignette style--think episodes--I think this may just be a book that is better for listening than reading. I haven't read it, though, so I can't really say. I just know that it was an excellent commuter book because I was getting it in snippets and it was written in snippets.

Catch-22 reminds me of the sitcom M*A*S*H*. In the same way that Hawkeye is the main character of the sitcom, a man named Yossarian is the main character. What I mean by that: While the entire book isn't focused on him, he gets our attention more than the other characters.

It's a book set in WWII, with the regular cast of characters all belonging to an American bombing squadron. There are scenes where the characters are bombing various locations, there are scenes with them in Rome for some R&R, there are scenes in the hospital, and there are scenes out and about the squadron's base. If you like M*A*S*H*, I'd give this book a try. From what I remember, they are similar in content, interpretation of military bureaucracy and personnel, and sense of humor. Also, Yossarian reminds me of Klinger, minus the cross-dressing.

The characters are what stand out the most about this book. They are Dickens-like in that Heller took quirks and blew them up to create entire characters, making them more caricatures than realistic; yet somehow we buy it as being true to the world they exist in. Plus, this is the military and we are given to understand that everyone is a bit crazy. Character example: Colonel Cathcart, whose main attribute is his ambition without self-confidence. He is constantly concerned with whether an idea or event is a "feather in his cap" or a "black eye." Those phrases are used over and over again.

Early on, I could tell this book would have a unique ending. It couldn't be totally happy, because that wouldn't fit the tone of the book, but it couldn't be serious either, for the same reason. It would be a bizarre ending that somehow made sense. I wasn't disappointed, and that's all I'll say on that, because I really do recommend this as a commuter book (but perhaps not with kids in the car, because R&R means a lot of time with prostitutes).

As I said, though, I don't know if I would recommend this for reading. It would probably try your patience and you'd have to read it in short periods instead of sitting down for a good couple hours to read. The style is disjointed and the plot itself isn't clear until near the end.