Dear Readers:
You will receive an email from me each month containing one boredom, one horror, and one glory. This is the twenty-fifth one.
Boredom. In college, I saw a poster saying Helen Vendler was going to come and give a lecture on Keats. I was really excited. I got there early and read something for class while I waited in a nice, comfortable chair. Soon, other people came in, and, eventually, a few professors ushered in Helen herself. She sat behind a desk at the front of the room, big and imposing, a combination of a person and an institution. The room was long and narrow, with tall windows on one side. Light filtered in through the treetops. It was late afternoon. She began to talk. She spoke slowly, deliberately, about things I had never read and didn’t care about. I felt exhausted, enervated. My chair was in the second row; it had a high back and was soft and cushioned, upholstered in a wallpaper-y fabric. The first row was empty. Even the professors who had walked her in didn’t have the courage to sit there. Helen and I caught each other’s eye a few times. I looked at my watch. Not very much time had gone by at all—more than five minutes but less than ten. The idea to leave landed on me like a vibrant butterfly. Once I thought of it, I knew I’d do it. It was like an emergency. I had to leave, this was too boring. Even if it was rude and she saw me do it and my professors saw me do it...—none of that mattered. I grabbed my backpack and walked out into the sunny afternoon, free!
Horror. What made everyone else stay there?
Maybe they all knew her personally.
Maybe they had read and understood and liked everything she was referring to (unlikely but possible).
Maybe there was another, secret and really fun, event directly after the lecture, like a delicious, paid-for dinner at a fancy restaurant, that they were all going to it together.
Maybe they were also bored but they had self-control.
Reverence?
Maybe they all left right after I did, and she ended up finishing the lecture to an empty room.
Glory. I go through long periods where I avoid reading poetry altogether, mostly because I’m worried I won’t like it anymore. It seems like it would be so boring, a painful, self-conscious, self-enrichment project. But that’s not the way it is at all. You’re free to leave! I mean by design, poetry frees you to leave. There’s an out at the end of each line, an exit sign.
The other day I was reading this poem, “Twelve,” by Lynn Melnick. I love its first two lines and its last two lines. Especially its first two lines:
When I was your age I went to a banquet.
When I was your age I went to a barroom
The first line, with its neat period at the end, is self-contained, in control—and then the line that directly follows it betrays it with its lack of punctuation at the end. Like, no, this isn’t something that can be ended so neatly, it’s just beginning. When I read that, I thought, I need to see what it is that’s just beginning. I chose to continue across the stanza break. That’s my favorite feeling: being free to leave and choosing to stay.
Sincerely,
Lucy
Recommended Reading: I wrote about how to teach online without Zoom or anything like it in Inside Higher Ed!
What a freeing concept. Walk out or walk in. Works two ways. I just wish I could see HV’s face when you left, but actually, I can picture it. The images in this piece are childlike and lush. Thank you for this. I will think about it all day.
I know that feeling so well. Compulsion to leave immediately. You explained it perfectly!