Look closely at the poems that draw attention to the qualities of mountains. Often they speak of endurance and strength, deep time, godliness, what is remote, alluring, difficult, mysterious, powerful in its presence. See the contrast in the images of clouds and birds, airy, untethered, relatively impermanent. Read "In the Middle of the Road," a symbolic representation of the human journey which requires we push on in spite of "fatigued retinas" and that presents "stones" by which we may, perhaps, retain focus and remember what is important, at the middle or center of our lives.
We have the given, the world and our various experiences, and then what we make of it verbally or linguistically, conceptually. Art manifests the human imagination and spirit; artists and all people imaginatively recreate the world in an attempt to understand the world and the life lived in it.
-----------------------------For next week, begin "The Hunting of the Snark." We'll go through a few of the first "fits" and see the way that author Lewis Carroll handles his material. These kinds of works, like the prose novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, are typically set in fantastical places and feature strange creatures we wouldn't expect to meet in real life. Often the actions and speech are equally implausible and silly but the premium is on having fun and showing the irrational side of our being and imagination and all the flexibility and ambiguities of language. We have to let go for a time our reliance on strict logic and sense to play along. Nonsense works appeal to children and to the child in us all. And perhaps we may, after all, find profound truth in them.
The Owl and the Pussycat by Edmund Lear (1812-1888)
The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They
took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
The
Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,’
O
lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What
a beautiful Pussy you are!’
Pussy
said to the Owl, ‘You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O
let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?’
They
sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows
And
there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With
a ring at the end of his nose.
‘Dear
pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?’ Said the Piggy, ‘I will.’
So
they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They
dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And
hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They
danced by the light of the moon.
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