Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Thank You Mrs. Ludwig

You can probably tell if you have read any of my posts, esp. some of the older ones, that I have been a pretentious pain in the ass (or have had a strain of pretentious assness about me) for a loong time. And yet, there is something more to it than showing off. This last weekend, celebrating my deliverance from the world of divorce lawyering (back to work part time as a lawyer for Dear Vermont, hurray!), I reread "Sailing to Byzantium" by W.B. Yeats. Well, speaking of pretentious pains in the ass, let me say here, Thank God for Yeats. I would wear a T-Shirt that said that.

Byzantium was one of those poems we had to plow through for English Lit. 101. I didn't get it then. I am glad they made me read it though, because now, 20 plus years later, that poem and I have a relationship that goes back.

My favorite high school English teacher was Mrs. Ludwig. Bless you whereever you may be, and your colleagues who put up with an ardent twit teenager so long ago. Thanks for making me want to read all this stuff. My motives may have been mixed in those days but there has been a pay off down this road that seems to be growing ever shorter. Thank you and Yeats too.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Yes, It's Poetry


There’s an old print in my office. I think it’s Lake Como. It shows an ancient hotel or a
Villa. Broad stairs lead to a round tower, with a pointed red roof; a balcony, and the blue Lake stretches beyond. At last are the mountains, all stones, but rose colored, in sunset light.

Now I see... That is where I belong. Somehow I have made a Mistake,
being here, looking out at the gas station (where someone was killed a few years ago) and taking complaints from people who are miserable in every sense of the word.

I was inattentive and missed some chance, dull-minded and didn’t see.

And the Collaborator, who belongs on that balcony, with me,
to work on The Script – where dialogue falls into place l
like ball bearings into some lightly oiled, perfectly-Machined groove
- and where we are disturbed only by
An evening breeze off the Lake that lifts our hair, and requires us
To use our cocktails as paperweights, has gone
Unmet.