In Broken Images, Robert Graves.


He is quick, thinking in clear images;
I am slow, thinking in broken images.

He becomes dull, trusting to his clear images;
I become sharp, mistrusting my broken images,

Trusting his images, he assumes their relevance;
Mistrusting my images, I question their relevance.

Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact,
Questioning their relevance, I question the fact.

When the fact fails him, he questions his senses;
When the fact fails me, I approve my senses.

He continues quick and dull in his clear images;
I continue slow and sharp in my broken images.

He in a new confusion of his understanding;
I in a new understanding of my confusion.

a kind of a judgemental poem, and not acting in the way I think it's best for poems to act, but I like it all the same.

I thought I should talk on here more. I do have things to say. I do think about things. Maybe I've just been too busy lately. or pretending to be too busy. or just not in the right mood. i did have something to say, though. a few things. who knows how long this post will be, probably not so long, but that's okay, right?

I realised something I should be honest about. Everytime I'm feeling down, the best way to pick myself up is to watch The History Boys. I realised from doing this that for ages now, I guess what I've wanted to be more than anything else is an English school boy (and while I could still be an English University student of sorts possibly, this school boy 'fantasy' (I think that is the correct word, actually, it is) is now never going to happen, never was). I think that's intresting. And something yeah, I need to be fully open and consious about. Not that it's something that's at a confessional level, but, I think it's significant. you know. I think I often put to the back of my mind just how much of an influence that film has been on me. I mean... it shaped my whole view of academia really... and my whole opening of my mind, my whole opening up of seeing the wider world, the wider scene of things... it really I think inspired me to be truely competitive in the classroom... I think it's even true to say that when I get angsty about classroom success, when I put into perspective any success here in NZ (e.g. Sonya, top in 10 in new zealand in media studies means nothing!), when I compete against sort of imaginary foes whom I don't know personality, but who must be out there (there's always someone brighter out there), I am competing against, thinking of, the kids in that film. it's true. i've watched it so many times. I bought and read the play. its introduction by Bennet shaped my whole angle on how to tackle scholarship exams, and now how to tackle university essays (working for english - philosophers sometimes less than impressed (by this I mean As and not A+s on occasion)). it was the one thing me and MacLean agreed on in Y12 drama - that that was a good play, and we should do it (unfortunately, the rights cost like 5000 pounds or something...). She even lent me a book with the film script in it, and stuff all about the film ,and I read that too. Yeah, it must be the text, in all its forms, that I've poured over the most, possibly only closely followed by Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now (the later based on the former). Yet they were for class, that was totally independent. I must admit to myself and others that it has deeply shaped my thinking. and, where my life is at at the moment, defintely. I watched it I think it was Saturday night yeah, and I did realise there's quite a bit of kind of... average parts in the text, actually, but it's at the point where there's too much enthrallment, too much love, yeah, that I can only just enjoy it, enjoy the immersion in the world of it all. I was intrested watching how, unlike with out texts where now I'm often distant, viewing them with the eye of the critic, picking out themes and all that englishy crap, here was just enthrallment. I found it hard to pull back and analayse as usuall. Sure, there was plenty of analysing still going on, I can't deny it, but comparatively... there was so little. just you know, more pure enjoyment, regardless of theme/techniques/overall merit.
That's enoigh of that, but yes. A strange thing to bring up. But really I go on about Conrad and Melville and that enough, but really that's got to be the most influential text in my life, still to this day.
 
few thoughts.
 
1.) I feel funny watching Maori TV/ that 'Te Reo' something something one that's fully in Maori. it's like, that's NZ, right, but, it's completely different. They had on like the other day (I"m always watching it) a whole school gathering thing, and all the kids were speaking Maori. in New Zealand. Don't think I've ever been anywhere where that's happened. it's crazy! they're all speaking maori man. I don't understand. it's whack, but it's new zealand. it feels funny. totally different side of life here I know next to nothing of.
 
2.) the other day in the library the girl sitting in front of me got a phone call on her cellphone. she pulls it out, opens it up, and she goes "what? she's dead!" and then there's like muffled laughing. Then a serious 'but, are you okay?' then like lots of 'oh my Gods' then more laughing, then more serious concern... it was really strange. some 'so, she's really dead?' some 'awwww, will you be alright?' and then some more laughing in what seemed a really inappropriate manner. it seemed really strange. the serious parts didn't seem insincere... and there were a lot of them... but the kind of caual laughing after 'she's dead' and at points following it seemed totally out of place. it didn't make any sense. Just like, you hear the phone. look up, and you hear, fairly loudly, 'she's dead?' and then you hear laughing. and then the swinging between serious-laughing-seriousness that follows. non-sensical.
 
3.) on my bed I have The Bible, Proust Volume 2., The Book of Luminous Things, The Great Modern Poets (open at Robert Graves, see above), Burning Chrome (science fiction, for ENGL238), Selected Auden (ENLG231), Hesse's Siddhartha (his most famous novel, about Buddha, Buddhism), and Springsteen's Born in the USA. also my german 'progress task', german vocab written over and over on refill ,and half-written poems and theory on how poetry/ literature should opperate. and a sweet as S.J.C. postcard recieved today with big books on the cover.
 
4.) I think soooo mucchhhh about what the role of poetry/literature (when I say poetry/poets right, you must know (for all my posts) that I just mean lit in general/writers) and what it should be for, and how it is unique from other things. I used to think theorising about such things was bad bad bad (under the influence on Dylan natrually - but more on this later, it deserves a whole post of its own, right, I've been thinking a lot about it)
but I am coming to realise I am a theoriser. I need to understand. I need theory. I have instinct I do, but it does neen much shaping, much direction. I need a lot of the Apollonian. I do have a dionysian side I do believe, but I should perhaps accept Apollo does dominate a fair bit, and I should accept that - it's not neccessarily a bad thing, at all. anyway, to continue from the below post, right, poetry is about saying too things at once. I beleive what makes poetry unique, and thus what good poetry should be doing, is saying two things at once. contradictions, confusions. this is the true capturing of human experience. it's what other things can't do. We did Walace Stevens last week. I will read more of him. From what I heard, and from what I heard about his theory (it seems similar to how I've been thinking lately), I like. neccessarily it makes his poems pretty much impenetrable (at least by rationality, by a rational mind seeking what it normally expects to find), which is an intresting side effect, but take note:
 

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

duno eh. 'parently it's pretty famous.

I haven't been enjoying Auden so much. he's alright, and there's some nice, and of course some very skillful stuff in there, but you know, yeah nah. first the politics, then the didcatorial - be free, be happy stuff. there is some good stuff there. But I just don't feel like it's my kind of poetry. not wild, not open enough, not confused enough, sometimes. the earlier stuff often is, sure, sure. But still. I duno. just not geling so well.

5.) Dylan is full of complexities and slick coolness, Johnny Cash just has a great warmth. I have a great love of complexities but it's warmth that sustains, warmth that has a great love for you.

6.) Proverbs 14:12 "There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death" - isn't that just brilliant? so... I can't find the word... so like, abrupt, forthcoming, direct. just straight up. also 21:21 "All a man's ways seem right to him, but the Lord weighs the heart." I think they make a good pair. Also relates to Dylan vs. Cash (I can't give up the Dylan vs. Cash man - and yet they both loved each other - there is polarity there, but also a great unity) I think. there are some weird proverbs in there man, lots about just appeasing the King and doing what he says or else you'll get in shit, even if what he's saying is a little off, (not weird - contextually understandable, but not so relevant today, realllyyyy), but there's some good ones. I do like those ones. it's true, All a man's ways seem right to him. (But does the Lord really weight the heart? Does Oedipa's Trystero really exist (Pynchon reference, thanks to ENGl238)? A modernist or a post-modernist? the plausability of post-modern religion? relatives vs. absolutes? questions, questions.

7.) I am a New Zealander and I live in New Zealand. I find that hard to understand sometimes, and what it means. I will keep reading my New Zealand literature. I love some parts of NZ. I love being chilled as, and having open space, and wearing stubbies, and  just you know, that whole side. But I struggle with a lot of it. When you go to London, to Berlin, to Tokyo, Shanghai, it's like shit man, shit, it's crazy, your mind gets blown... just the shit you can do there man, the shit that's there, the access, the opportunities, the size, the age, the population, the culture.... we undenyably pale in comparision to a lot of that. you come home with NZ feeling so empty, and so small. it's nice right, and enjoyable, but smallllll. isolatedddd. i do struggle with that, I must admit to myself. it's beautiful, but.... you know. once I get out of here in a few years (maybe next year? keen. come on vic OE.) I can't see myself coming back for a while. even Sydney man. so muchhh bigger - the whole population of NZ in one city. boom. I'll always feel at home in New Zealand. but there's a lot out there New Zealand just don't have. on a side note, I want read that autobiography (http://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Anthropologist-Memoir-Michael-Jackson/dp/187736147X) of that NZ anthroplogist/poet Michael Jackson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jackson_(anthropologist) who's professoring it up at Harvard recently (?) out here.  I think it'd be plenty intresting. costs like $45 or something, though.

ah, that'll do for tonight. not that I think i'll be able to sleep any time soon, but hey, I can go maybe read or something. go hide my laptop downstairs.

P.S. (EDIT) I wanted to add to the Proverbs quotes... Ecclesiastes 7:29 - " This only I have found: God made mankind upright, but men have gone in search of many schemes." Same kind of sentiment, right. schemes, ways... love it. this book brings me peace.