Thursday 19 April 2007

Halfway Through

Rather a long way up Mount Etna with even further to go. Snow, sunshine and volcanic rocks.



Halfway through AZX300 'Twentieth Century Literature - Texts and Debates' and I'm still in there. Halfway through means TMA03 is due soon and I am in the middle of studying the Poets of the 1930s and writing a 2000 word essay on Louis MacNeice and Stephen Spender and their poems relating to the Tensions Between Industrial And Rural Landscapes in that socially disturbed era.




I didn't used to like poetry. I didn't like reading it, hearing it, writing it. But I like it now. I am enjoying going under the surface of the words and interpreting the meanings. I would read the words of a poem and ask myself what do they mean - couldn't be fussed to find out. I used to think that poetry was useless. If the poets have something to say then do it in prose instead of in that fanciful, metaphoric language. Say what you mean. Tell me!




I only used to like rhyming poetry but now I think that can appear contrived, as the poet can lose the meanings/message looking for a suitable word to end a line and have to compromise. Betjeman and Ayres are good at rhyming and hanging on to their theme. I can see beat, rhythm, music within the lines of the Poets of the 1930s.




I'm learning to enjoy poems with hidden meanings, reading lovely words and phrases, having to do a bit of work for myself.




Maybe this period of successful study is because I've been stuck indoors for four whole days now as the builders are in renovating my bathroom and there's no place for me to go except sit at my computer and read the course books while they ask,




'What colour tiles do you want?'




'Kettle on?'




'Shall I put some shelves here?'




'Have you got a pencil/scissors/old towels?'




'This mirror don't fit where you wanted it- where shall we put it?'


Tomorrow the Men Who Lay Floors are coming. And the Men who Do Tiling. I think the Man Who Does Power is coming too.


My new toilet has a Lid That Closes On Its Own. It will shut itself with a silent squish. This means no more lavvy with the lid left up. Is this Male-Proof?
















2 comments:

Rob said...

Doh! Just realised you are Morning, returned from the limbo of cyberspace. Sorry - slow on the uptake. Age does this...

Buggles Balham High Road said...

And it was Age that made me lose my Morning Identity too Rob - great to see you.