I was fortunate to meet The Poetess at Green Lake today, doing her bit to remind us that
“The terms poet, engineer, doctor and farmer must carry equal weight.”
That’s all I can say for now. I have pictures and will share them when they are processed. She gave me a reading of Amy Lowell’s Venetian Glass. I found it hard to listen to the words, as I was listening to her voice instead. I wanted to hear the performance but missed the content of it in my desire to hear a poem being read aloud.
I actually didn’t get it so well. The Poet herself (I leave off the -ess, as I consider it a diminutive and archaic) expressed some confusion over the idea of waking from “thoughtless idleness.” But I see it as waking from the kind of busywork one often finds oneself engaged in, where the work gets done while your mind is otherwise engaged. It’s echoed later in “through the vacancy of busy life” which to me references modern life and it’s confusion of action with activity, where we are going all the time but not anywhere in particular or all that quickly.
As I read it, the chance meetings and the resulting tears echo the wake-up call of the clock tower to a sailor at sea, reminding him of that which he would sooner forget, perhaps the reason he goes to sea.
She is out there every Sunday, 9-5, just like a regular workman.