Ok so it has been a while since my last post, but I have had good reason I promise. I have been rather busy and had fairly sporadic access to the internet. In the time since my last post I have finished my degree, Interned at the Hay Festival and met loads of really cool authors, had a holiday in Tenerife and started thinking about my life in the big bad world. I have also had the opportunity to start reading in earnest again, something which I have really missed with months of uni work, and which I am so glad to have back again. In honour of this and to attempt to maintain my critical faculties to some extent, over the next few weeks I am going to try and attempt to write up some of the books I have been enjoying throwing myself into (review seems too critical and formal) as well as try and catch up with my neglected weekly poem schedule.
I was going to begin with the Jabberwocky, one of my favourite poems of all time, but I feel that deserves its own blog post, without my ramblings above, so instead I am going to begin with ‘The Trees’ by Philip Larkin:
The Trees
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.
Is it they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.
Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
By Philip Larkin
Although it is no longer spring it seems for my life at least, to be a time for renewal, reawakening, and rebirth so the regenerative message of this poem seems particularly apt at the moment, however what I usually find so appealing about this poem is the bittersweet tone of the first stanza. The delicacy and ephemeral quality of the description of the new leaves “coming into leaf/ like something almost being said” really captures my imagination but also simultaneously juxtaposes and involves the strange sense of holding back and of disarticulation, of words unsaid. Alongside the beauty is a sense of loss, which is also hinted at by the final line of the stanza: “Their greenness is a kind of grief”. It seems to be saying that in the very beauty of the new is their past and future, the way they were and the fact they will soon fade, but they are more beautiful because of it. This poem is almost a memento mori which also highlights life and rebirth as well as death. Anyway despite the slightly sombre note at times, the final line is the one I am going to take as my message: “Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.”
I was going to begin with the Jabberwocky, one of my favourite poems of all time, but I feel that deserves its own blog post, without my ramblings above, so instead I am going to begin with ‘The Trees’ by Philip Larkin:
The Trees
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.
Is it they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.
Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
By Philip Larkin
Although it is no longer spring it seems for my life at least, to be a time for renewal, reawakening, and rebirth so the regenerative message of this poem seems particularly apt at the moment, however what I usually find so appealing about this poem is the bittersweet tone of the first stanza. The delicacy and ephemeral quality of the description of the new leaves “coming into leaf/ like something almost being said” really captures my imagination but also simultaneously juxtaposes and involves the strange sense of holding back and of disarticulation, of words unsaid. Alongside the beauty is a sense of loss, which is also hinted at by the final line of the stanza: “Their greenness is a kind of grief”. It seems to be saying that in the very beauty of the new is their past and future, the way they were and the fact they will soon fade, but they are more beautiful because of it. This poem is almost a memento mori which also highlights life and rebirth as well as death. Anyway despite the slightly sombre note at times, the final line is the one I am going to take as my message: “Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.”
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