Anne Bradstreet

I am obnoxious to each carping tongue
Who says my hand a needle better fits.

-- Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)

In the seventeenth century, in America’s Puritan culture, even a governor’s daughter was expected to subscribe to a narrow regimen, though I guess a governor’s daughter could also better stretch those bounds. Since I’m jonesing for poetry and am short on money for new books, I hunted through my piles of books for my old college anthologies and found the American one.

As you can see I am in seventeenth-century America, which is all the more bearable for me because it does complement my renewed interest in Christianity, and the Puritan colonies rather consciously strived to be little cities of God. And, as with all poetry at this early time, the poetry tends to be bucolic, which can be alien for the many of us who largely know life in the concrete jungles of our cities, where weeds are the most familiar fauna from nature’s bounty, and cockroaches are more common than deer as well as dryads and nymphs, but such poetry still has its charms.

Below are a few stanzas from Ms. Bradstreet’s “Contemplations”.

( Read more... )

Anne Bradstreet

I am obnoxious to each carping tongue
Who says my hand a needle better fits.

-- Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)

In the seventeenth century, in America’s Puritan culture, even a governor’s daughter was expected to subscribe to a narrow regimen, though I guess a governor’s daughter could also better stretch those bounds. Since I’m jonesing for poetry and am short on money for new books, I hunted through my piles of books for my old college anthologies and found the American one.

As you can see I am in seventeenth-century America, which is all the more bearable for me because it does complement my renewed interest in Christianity, and the Puritan colonies rather consciously strived to be little cities of God. And, as with all poetry at this early time, the poetry tends to be bucolic, which can be alien for the many of us who largely know life in the concrete jungles of our cities, where weeds are the most familiar fauna from nature’s bounty, and cockroaches are more common than deer as well as dryads and nymphs, but such poetry still has its charms.

Below are a few stanzas from Ms. Bradstreet’s “Contemplations”.

( Read more... )

I know that feeling

That's the time when you grow up, or at least that was the case with me.

(Source: Tumblr)

I know that feeling

That's the time when you grow up, or at least that was the case with me.

(Source: Tumblr)

Writer's Block: Blast to the past

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My first temptation might be to tell little Monk that he doesn’t really have a brother, that that little white boy posing as his baby brother, is indeed another man’s son and a wolf in sheep’s clothing who resents you for all he is worth, which fortunately isn’t worth very much.

But I know that little Monk would just shrink back and walk away, taking one last look at me as though I were a mad man.

My second thought might be to be brutal - to be cruel to be kind - and tell him the truth, that he is looking at himself as an adult, and that he should brace himself accordingly. Life ain’t going to be a happy movie for him.

But I am sure that little Monk would leap back and start running in horror, trying to shake off the words as the ravings of a lunatic.

So, I might pursue a different strategy altogether. Recalling my greatest regrets, over things I might be able to do something about, I might encourage little Monk to get much more into reading books. I know that I did not take to my reading life and do some serious reading, as though it were a way of life, a religion, until I was well into my thirties, and, lord, how I wince over the lost decade and more of lost opportunity. I should’ve read “Hamlet” at least a dozen times rather than just a half-dozen times, as a small example.

At the same time, another profound regret that I have had is the poor quality of my diary. I didn’t make my most serious effort at keeping a journal until I was set to begin graduate school, as I supposed that my life might be getting genuinely interesting. I was wrong about my life picking up, very wrong, but the journaling habit became a big consolation. However, during the early years of the diary, the years when I even still had some social traffic in my life, my journaling habits were wretched, as I only recorded the most banal sentiments regarding my emotional turbulence, and these entries are consequently almost valueless to me now.

So, in trying to arm little Monk, I might try to pass on a writer’s tip, that is, to try to get him started right away on a journal, especially since he has years of a few decent friendships ahead of him, and to tell him that he ought to make a point of recording specific, concrete details of that which one would most like to remember, such as snatches of dialogue, which will be dearly treasured in the later, emptier years.

However, I know little Monk. I know that none of this advice will stick. He will doubtlessly nod his head earnestly, but by the next day, when he gets out of bed, all of it will be forgotten, as good as never having happened. Even if he does remember some of it, he is not going to go out of his way and make these strange efforts. He’s not going to keep a diary like a girl. Nor is he going to make books an almost religious part of his life, which would be more like work, like extra homework, which he just wouldn’t be interested in.

So, I might not bother saying anything to little Monk. In the end, I would probably just watch him for a while, feeling sad, and wondering how things can go so badly wrong.

Writer's Block: Blast to the past

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My first temptation might be to tell little Monk that he doesn’t really have a brother, that that little white boy posing as his baby brother, is indeed another man’s son and a wolf in sheep’s clothing who resents you for all he is worth, which fortunately isn’t worth very much.

But I know that little Monk would just shrink back and walk away, taking one last look at me as though I were a mad man.

My second thought might be to be brutal - to be cruel to be kind - and tell him the truth, that he is looking at himself as an adult, and that he should brace himself accordingly. Life ain’t going to be a happy movie for him.

But I am sure that little Monk would leap back and start running in horror, trying to shake off the words as the ravings of a lunatic.

So, I might pursue a different strategy altogether. Recalling my greatest regrets, over things I might be able to do something about, I might encourage little Monk to get much more into reading books. I know that I did not take to my reading life and do some serious reading, as though it were a way of life, a religion, until I was well into my thirties, and, lord, how I wince over the lost decade and more of lost opportunity. I should’ve read “Hamlet” at least a dozen times rather than just a half-dozen times, as a small example.

At the same time, another profound regret that I have had is the poor quality of my diary. I didn’t make my most serious effort at keeping a journal until I was set to begin graduate school, as I supposed that my life might be getting genuinely interesting. I was wrong about my life picking up, very wrong, but the journaling habit became a big consolation. However, during the early years of the diary, the years when I even still had some social traffic in my life, my journaling habits were wretched, as I only recorded the most banal sentiments regarding my emotional turbulence, and these entries are consequently almost valueless to me now.

So, in trying to arm little Monk, I might try to pass on a writer’s tip, that is, to try to get him started right away on a journal, especially since he has years of a few decent friendships ahead of him, and to tell him that he ought to make a point of recording specific, concrete details of that which one would most like to remember, such as snatches of dialogue, which will be dearly treasured in the later, emptier years.

However, I know little Monk. I know that none of this advice will stick. He will doubtlessly nod his head earnestly, but by the next day, when he gets out of bed, all of it will be forgotten, as good as never having happened. Even if he does remember some of it, he is not going to go out of his way and make these strange efforts. He’s not going to keep a diary like a girl. Nor is he going to make books an almost religious part of his life, which would be more like work, like extra homework, which he just wouldn’t be interested in.

So, I might not bother saying anything to little Monk. In the end, I would probably just watch him for a while, feeling sad, and wondering how things can go so badly wrong.