Sun and Candlelight famously quotes Barrett Browning. In The Course of True Love, our heroine is stuck atop The Oldehove Tower and is reciting Tennyson to keep her British stiff upper lip up. “'Tis the little rift within the lute - That by and by will make the music mute, And, ever widening, slowly silence all”.
But the Pantheon of Literary Greats are divided on the ability of poetry to do...well, anything.
"I have been used to consider poetry as the food of love," said Darcy. "Of a fine, stout healthy love it may. Every thing nourishes what is strong already. But if it be only a slight inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away." --Jane Austen
I once had a juvenile admirer write out the lyrics to Guns and Roses' Sweet Child O' Mine and pass it to me in German class--which is rather retrospectively charming since his Deutsch name was Axel. I never spoke to him again.
Librettist Gilbert involves the satirical veneration of poetry in his classic, Pirates of Penzance (you haven't seen it?! Silly Betty.):
KING: Although our dark career
Sometimes involves the crime of stealing,
We rather think that we're
Not altogether void of feeling.
Although we live by strife,
We're always sorry to begin it,
For what, we ask, is life
Without a touch of Poetry in it?
(all kneel)
ALL: Hail, Poetry, thou heav'n-born maid!
Thou gildest e'en the pirate's trade.
Hail, flowing fount of sentiment!
All hail, all hail, divine emollient!
Question to The Bettys: Have you ever been quoted poetry at? Did it kill off a relationship?
Ross and I recited poems at our "fancy" wedding at Fountains Abbey in North Yorkshire. His was A Birthday by Christina Rosetti:
ReplyDeleteMy heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these,
Because my love is come to me.
Raise me a daïs of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.
Mine was i carry your heart with me by e.e. cummings:
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
I, of course, couldn't manage to read mine without crying buckets. I am an old softie, you know.
I beleive that Tony from swim team recited a poem to me before he asked me to go out with him. I am in Miss Elizabeth Bennet's boat here.
ReplyDeleteA sonnet would surely starve any chance of love for me... unless he was Mr, Darcy H.O.T.
Ok, I'm not a huge poetry buff, but I LOVE the
ReplyDeleteE.E. Cummings poem. I'm sure that I read it in High School and it didn't mean that much to me. I saw it in a movie (In Her Shoes) and I was crying buckets. I don't know how you made it through on your wedding day.
Honestly can't remember if an ardent admirer ever attempted to do poetry,....wait, does Haiku count, because that's some poetry I can get behind! I seem to remember laughing hilariously at some lines Michael threw at me.
Lovely poems, both. Yours must be a fine,stout healthy love.
ReplyDeleteDid you memorize your poems or did you have cheat sheets? If you memorized them and didn't need help under pressure I am amazed (because I totally fall apart under pressure)...
Betty Suzanne: Haiku is the Hanna Bettys answer to poetry.
ReplyDeleteBetty Keira was a Humanities major in college so love, loves poetry but would feel on the squishy side if I were the subject of an original composition--unless it were by Frost in which case I would LOVE it.
ReplyDeleteBetty Keira: here's your Robert Frost quote of the day:
ReplyDelete"I'd just as soon play tennis with the net down."
Hail Poetry.
Betty Suzanne wins (ding ding ding) the prize for getting the connection here. (Warning, sad romantic story coming up.)
ReplyDeleteSo here's what happened with me and Betty Ross. I was still married to Henry, and Ross and I were friends (true story). We talked on the phone and sent e-mails, but it was clear to me that he needed a friend and I needed a friend and anyway I'd offered to help him a) move or at least find a new home to move to, and b) do some internet dating.
So, about three months into our friendship, I flew to England to visit him. (Nothing "untoward" happened, although he did not yank some poor defenseless old woman off the street to stay in the house and chaperon us.) Still, we were very very fond of each other, and as I was flying back to the U.S., "In Her Shoes" (the very same movie that Betty Suzanne saw) was on the on-board entertainment system. Not only did I cry a lot when Cameron Diaz recites that poem, but I watched the entire movie again just to see that scene a second time. And sobbed buckets -- other people on the plane were quite unnerved by it. I really didn't a) know that I loved him *that* much and b) that I had no clue how everything would work out. As it turned out, Betty Ross drove back home from Heathrow listening to Sarah McLaughlin's "Adia" 23 times and crying all the way. (We're both old softies.)
So of course that was the poem I had to recite on our wedding day. (He had a tough time finding the Rosetti poem, but it was perfect for him too because I am the first & great love of his life, so when I arrived it was like his life started -- the birthday of his life.) We had cheat sheets (beautiful "notebooks" that actually were photo albums I found in a craft store -- mine was a pretty blue with a scrap of the embroidered silk my dress was made of in the front cover; Betty Ross's was navy leather and is now very usefully holding our postage stamps sorted by denomination) and even so I couldn't keep my voice steady. We have the recording from that day, and I can't bring myself to listen to it because I won't know whether to cry or laugh. I do remember telling the guests, "It's not easy to do, you know."
My previous experience with poetry was John Masefield's Sea Fever "I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky..." which has nothing to do with getting married, at least you hope not.
What a lovely wedding day! Betty Suzanne is a noted watering pot and wouldn't be able to get through the first stanza without looking sodden and (annoyingly) gorgeous. I'm not made of too much sterner stuff though, so I'd better not be chucking stones from my glass house.
ReplyDeleteI didn't cry at my wedding. I did fistpump though!
ReplyDeleteFYI and totally tangential, the only poem I know by heart is Frost's Road Not Taken which I am happy to trot out time without number if an impromptu poetic number is needed (sadly, it so often is).
ReplyDeleteGrandpa Hanna of all us Bettys like the poetry of Robert Service. But try quoting The Cremation of Sam McGee to a girl and getting anywhere...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZG9kP9kAiY
I wanted to cry at my wedding, for a different reason.
ReplyDeleteBetty Magdalen: Lovely sad, romantic story. We Founding Bettys like to pretend we are quite stoic, but yeah, we're squishy inside. Had we been at your wedding individually we would have cried, en masse - it would be laughter. We tend to laugh at highly inappropriate times (to relieve stress). We could tell you a story about our grandmother's funeral...it involves a casket and a Makita Cordless Screwdriver...and lots of laughter.
ReplyDeleteBetty Keira: I'm with Dad on this one. I loved when Danny was learning "The Cremation..." last year for school. It took me right back to 7th grade...
Rebekah aka Zombie Bride: It was a lovely fistpump.
I hope eventually to hear (read) the reason for the fistpump, the "different" reason for crying at your wedding, Betty Samurai Mom, and the story with the Makita cordless screwdriver.
ReplyDeleteI smiled throughout my mother's memorial service; it was just such a nice series of stories about her. My sister was a pill, however, which is why you're all my sisters now. (The paperwork is still being pushed through, which is why you didn't know that yet.)