A confession

We think it was last Christmas that the Better Half, or one of Santa's book elves, get us a copy of the "Deathbed Edition" of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. We had, of course, read anthologized bits and pieces of Whitman's works back in college but only recently started at the first page of the entire volume. We have been neglecting this classic work (the first?) of true American poetry. We should not have. Before we had wandered too far among the Leaves, we encountered an entirely new word, at least new to us. More precisely, we don't recall ever having read it before. The word is eidolon. We looked it up in our dictionary before we learned that:

Walt Whitman's poem by the same name in 1876 used a much broader understanding of the term, expanded and detailed in the poem.^[5]In Whitman's use of the term we can see the use broaden to include the concept of an oversoul composed of the individual souls of all life and expanding to include the Earth itself and the hierarchy of the planets, Sun, stars and galaxy.

That's when we realized we have become too hide-bound. We know that poets love and are in love with language and words. We hadn't previously considered the prospect that poetical metaphors and other uses broaden standard definitions. It is slowly becoming more clear that Rilke was quite serious when he wrote "You must change your life."

would you change anything about this building?

Photo by J. Harrington

We are reminded of Winston Churchill's assertion that “We shape our buildings, and afterwards, our buildings shape us.” In fact, we would further assert that we could strike the word "buildings" and insert the word "poems" and be just as true. Furthermore, we think such a modification would apply to both the makers and the readers of poetry.

Spring is among the better and more auspicious times to work on changing our lives, wouldn't you agree it's time to better appreciate and enjoy the beauty of life returning to our North Country. Although, and we apologize for this but we can't resist, we're unclear whether we should risk losing our head over such a change. Alice in Wonderland, anyone?

Archaic Torso of Apollo

Rainer Maria Rilke, 1875- 1926

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could 
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

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