So set ...

So set beautiful wreaths, Dika,
about your tresses
plait together the dill shoots
with your tender fingers.
Primed with flowers
the blest spirits of Joy most favor
such occasions:
they shun people who wear no garlands.
-- Sappho, Greek poetess

Delilah, a bit of poetry

“And it came to pass afterward, that he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah.” – Judges 16:4

In the valley of Sorek
on the banks of the Sorek
she knelt to draw water
she gracefully knelt.

The waters flowed before her
the river cooled her toes, her small ankles
as she stepped,
as she left prints in the sand.

Philistia’s daughter
Caphtor’s grandchild
drawing water now in desert land
in the valley of Sorek

She grew to catch
a wild man’s eye
she grew to snare
Sampson of Manoah.

Delilah.

She must have been beautiful.
She must have been brilliant.
Lives now only in the book of her enemies
Lost soul, byword, beautiful detail

And the Sorek flows on
Through the valley of Sorek.

A little Longfellow for my Wednesday

"All are architects of fate
working in these walls of time
some with massive deeds and great
some with ornaments of rhyme ..."

-- Longfellow, The Builders

In keeping with CS Lewis' advice to often read verse aloud in a solitary place, I read this stanza out loud at a stoplight today, and I hope that it will stay in my head for a while. It is indeed profound.

I didn't like the sound of my voice much. It doesn't have the manly gravitas that I would wish for it. And my sense of poetic cadence is not great. We must, I was told back in college, not read poetry in sing-song form, like a child's nursery rhyme. But I sing-songed Longfellow.

I need more practice. In more solitary moments.

To Savor or to Study?

How do you read?

Is a book to you the paper-and-ink equivalent of a glass of wine -- drunk down, enjoyed briefly and then forgotten?

Over the last few years, I've established a routine for myself that probably betrays a lack of sanity on my part. I keep a notebook at hand and as I read this book or that, I scribble down details, pithy quotes, etc.

But just as there's something sad about the professional biologist who counts petals, sepals and stamens, who assidiously notes pubescence, leaf structure and growth habit -- and finds himself unable to simply enjoy the flower the way any innocent child would ...

... So I recognize now the problem in my reading plan.

It's great to have notes at hand, to be able to remind myself of plot lines and witticisms, to have actual evidence of having read a certain book. No more do I shut a book at the end of a long read and realize that I remember only the vaguest details of my journey through it.

But great literature is also meant to be savored. Great writers have a flow to their sentences, a rhythm to their chapters. And each time that I stop to scribble a note, it's as if I'm putting the orchestra on hold in the middle of a performance in order to note that b-sharp predominated in this movement, followed by an aria.

Last night, I read Book Two of Ovid's "Art of Love." I resisted interrupting myself and coasted along on the sheer poetry. I therefore have no notes on these passages and can tell the world and myself only that I enjoyed them.