thoughts

I wrote a short essay recently on an excerpt from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh. It caught my eye as I was browsing through the anthology and it spoke to me - I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's the romantic in me..

Anyways, I hadn't considered reading the entire book but I am very much tempted now. Perhaps others would find it weird that I enjoy reading works produced by a girl/woman who lived in the 1800s. But that's the thing - there's something fresh and natural about Barrett Browning's poetry. I have noticed that poets of recent times are resorting to the "make a puzzle of it" technique which irks me. I admit it can be rewarding when you piece together a poem but must it always be like this? It is vexing and tiring. I don't think there's a binary here. How can there be? There is much we owe to all types of poetry. But let me tell you that I take rest from Wallace Steven's poetry and turn to Barrett Browning where I know I will hear the truth of it, without questioning whether it is the truth.

In those days, though, I never analysed

Myself even. All analysis comes late.

You catch a sight of Nature, earliest,

In full front sun-face, and your eyelids wink

And drop before the wonder of ‘t; you miss

The form, through seeing the light. I lived, those days,

And wrote because I lived–unlicensed else:

My heart beat in my brain. Life’s violent flood

Abolished bounds,–and, which my neighbour’s field,

Which mine, what mattered? It is so in youth.

We play at leap-frog over the god Term;

The love within us and the love without

Are mixed, confounded; if we are loved or love,

We scarce distinguish. So, with other power.

Being acted on and acting seem the same:

In that first onrush of life’s chariot-wheels,

We know not if the forests move or we.

And so, like most young poets, in a flush

Of individual life, I poured myself

Along the veins of others, and achieved

Mere lifeless imitations of life verse,

And made the living answer for the dead,