Burning to Learn

Great literary capture of the burning desire to learn?

Don Winslow’s “California Fire and Life”: Chapters 10-15.  

I will excerpt that section for a college class someday.  

When I asked Winslow if he’d mind, he seemed damned delighted.

Expressive--of What?

Old clay.

Conflagration

Last night's surprise street scene.

Laws of Life

LAWS OF LIFE

Stone bruises;
Clay forgives.
Yet stone holds,
While clay slips.

Fire cleanses;
Fire burns;
Fire demands;
Fire yearns.

Under fierce fire
Clay becomes stone.

--Matt Duckworth

9/19/15

Take Note

We are the grit
That mars the paint
Or makes the pearl.

"Fiery dust,"
Lord Byron wrote,
Furious, fiendish;
Take proper note.

--MD

Recovery Cat

Motley, laid up with dehydration and injured legs.
She'll be 20 on April 1st.

Ashes of an Old Poem, Sparks for a New Poem?

Nights, I built fires from the wood
You did not chop.

--MD


This opening sentence has come back to mind recently, and I've been trying to recall the rest of this poem that I'd written in, oh, Winter Quarter 1980 -- in Carl Dennis' 46B: Intro to Poetry Class.  I used to recite the poem to myself as I walked to and from campus, so the memory may be deep and so retrievable.  The setting was a trip down a river, two characters and two canoes, a definite lack of appreciation on the one hand, and a distinct inability to make headway that mattered on the other.  Rocks and rapids, of course, provided the physical obstacles.  I recall a class discussion of the poem, actually, that lasted a good amount of time, which was both alarming and encouraging to me, as my classmates debated the dynamics between the characters.  I was so shy then and speechless; Prof. Dennis assured me afterwards that the lengthy discussion itself, more than the particular comments, was a mark of success in that my poem had held attention.  That was kind.

I can't seem to find the old poem itself, which is only surprising after all these years if you understand just how many manuscripts and notebooks and what-have-you I've kept year after year after year.  Which is part of the problem, no doubt.

I guess I could or should write a new poem.  Maybe I'll pick up from where the memory has left off . . . .

Or, maybe I'll leave that fragment alone.  Let the one image stand.

Byron: "Many Are Poets Who Have Never Penned"

Many are Poets who have never penned
Their inspiration, and perchance the best:
They felt, and loved, and died, but would not lend
Their thoughts to meaner beings; they compressed
The God within them, and rejoined the stars
Unlaurelled upon earth, but far more blessed
Than those who are degraded by the jars
Of Passion, and their frailties linked to fame,
Conquerors of high renown, but full of scars.
Many are Poets but without the name;
For what is Poesy but to create
From overfeeling Good or Ill; and aim
At an external life beyond our fate,
And be the new Prometheus of new men,
Bestowing fire from Heaven, and then, too late,
Finding the pleasure given repaid with pain,
And vultures to the heart of the bestower,
Who, having lavished his high gift in vain,
Lies to his lone rock by the sea-shore?
So be it: we can bear.—

--Lord Byron, the opening lines to Canto IV
of The Prophecy of Dante

Moya Cannon: "Tending" and "Hunter's Moon"

I think if you even merely browse this blog that my appreciation for the poetry of Moya Cannon is very strong.  Here are two more that I wish to share:


TENDING

When a wood fire burns down and falls apart
the fire in each log dies quickly
unless burnt ends are tilted together --
a moment's touch, recognition;
gold and blue flame
wraps the singing wood.

--Moya Cannon


HUNTER'S MOON

There are perhaps no accidents,
no coincidences.
When we stumble against people, books, rare moments
          out of time,
these are illuminations --
like the hunter's moon that sails tonight in its high clouds,
casting light into our black harbour,
where four black turf boats
tug at their ropes,
hunger for the islands.

--Moya Cannon

Viking Wisdom: "Fire Kindles Fire"

Flames from one log leap to another;
      fire kindles fire.
A man learns from the minds of others;
      A fool prefers his own.

--from "Words of the High One"--
one of the many Poetic Edda poems
translated from the Old Norse
by Patricia Terry

There are many reasons why I like this stanza and why I've quoted it to many a class.  I like to discuss with the class the governing concerns and imagery, the communal intelligence and the kindling fire.  And, I like to ask my students what happens if you substitute "tree" in place of "log" in that first line.  This stanza and that juxtaposition of wild vs. domesticated "fire" provides a foundation for worthy discourse in the classroom and out.

Robert Graves: The Fires And Falcons of Desire

FIRE WALKER


To be near her is to be near the furnace.
Fortunate boy who could slip idly through,
Basket in hand, culling the red-gold blossom,
Then wander on, untaught that flowers are flame,
With no least smell of scorching on his clothes!
I, at a greater distance, charred to coal,
Earn her reproach for my temerity.




THE FALCON WOMAN


It is hard to be a man
Whose word is his bond
In love with such a woman,


When he builds on a promise
She lightly let fall
In carelessness of spirit.


The more sternly he asks her
To stand by that promise
The faster she flies.


But is it less hard
To be born such a woman
With wings like a falcon
And in carelessness of spirit
To love such a man?


--Robert Graves


Graves is always a good poet for the issues and the textures of desire.


Falcon women and falcon men--or half-falcon folks, even--make love and life harder on their partners and would-be partners.  Warning signs needed?  Would they be heeded, even?

Playing In The Creek As If I Were Seven Years Old

Aground or grounded?  Either way, this blue bookfish is at large.

Just Saying

Looking at the empty Glenlivet bottle (a lovely green) and imagining the red Molotov trajectory, you know: "It's a good thing I don't drink vodka."

Yeats: "The Moods" and "The Mask"

THE MOODS

Time drops in decay,

Like a candle burnt out

And the mountains and woods

Have their day, have their day;

What one in the rout

Of the fire-born moods

Has fallen away?

THE MASK

'Put off that mask of burning gold

With emerald eyes.'

'O no, my dear, you make so bold

To find if hearts be wild and wise,

And yet not cold.'

'I would but find what's there to find,

Love or deceit.'

'It was the mask engaged your mind,

And after set your heart to beat,

Not what's behind.'

'But lest you are my enemy,

I must enquire.'

'O no, my dear, let all that be;

What matter, so there is but fire

In you, in me.'

--William Butler Yeats

P.S. The sense of loss that pervades "The Moods" is absolute, though I'm never quite sure how to answer that question at the end of that poem. (I look around me to see who is missing now, to see whom to name. I wonder about the "fire-born" and yearn to join that "rout," even as the loss is presented to me.) The repetition of "Have their day, have their day" has always worked its magic on me, resonating down the years.

I love how these poems make me think, dramatically and thematically, and yet the emotions emanating from and evoked by these poems are the roots, the sources, the impulses for such thinking. When I was younger, I always thought that more thought was needed to "get" Yeats' work, but older now, I see that more feeling is the real key. Imagination demands both sides of the coin, after all.