![\"English](\"http:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/english\/files\/2015\/04\/English-blog-405-Virginia.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nMy Poetry Month<\/a> Choices: \u201cThe Bishop Orders his Tomb from St. Praxed\u2019s Church,\u201d \u201cOf Modern Poetry,\u201d \u201cGesture,\u201d and “Postscript”<\/p>\n This assignment is very difficult because I have so many \u201cfavourites\u201d for so many reasons. Here are four of them.<\/p>\n 1) \u201cThe Bishop Orders his Tomb from St. Praxed\u2019s Church\u201d<\/a> by Robert Browning<\/a><\/p>\n Because drama is my first love, I really delight in dramatic monologues, and especially those that feature strong characters. \u201cFra Lippo Lippi\u201d and \u201cMy Last Duchess\u201d are other Browning poems which fall into this category. I take such pleasure in hearing the voice, figuring out the circumstances, envisioning the scene. In this case, the bishop, from his death bed, is so deliciously corrupt and filled with petty jealousy. Ironically, I think Browning must have been thinking of all the seven deadly sins when he conjured up this character. Browning\u2019s consummate skill in handling the blank verse while giving his character such a \u201cnatural\u201d voice is remarkable.<\/p>\n 2) \u201cOf Modern Poetry\u201d by Wallace Stevens<\/a> and 3) \u201cGesture\u201d by Donald Finkel<\/a><\/p>\n I am fascinated by poems about poetry. I have a whole set of them that I re-read (and often assign to students, hoping they will be equally attracted). I offer two here because one (Finkel\u2019s) is so playful, whereas the other (Wallace Stevens\u2019s) is more theoretical. But both involve the reader in reflection about what it means to be a reader of poetry: \u201can invisible audience listens, \/Not to the play, but to itself.\u201d<\/p>\n Of Modern Poetry<\/strong><\/p>\n The poem of the mind in the act of finding<\/p>\n What will suffice. It has not always had<\/p>\n To find: the scene was set; it repeated what<\/p>\n Was in the script.<\/p>\n Then the theatre was changed<\/p>\n To something else. Its past was a souvenir.<\/p>\n It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.<\/p>\n It has to face the men of the time and to meet<\/p>\n The women of the time. It has to think about war<\/p>\n And it has to find what will suffice. It has<\/p>\n To construct a new stage. It has to be on that stage,<\/p>\n And, like an insatiable actor, slowly and<\/p>\n With meditation, speak words that in the ear,<\/p>\n In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat,<\/p>\n Exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the sound<\/p>\n Of which, an invisible audience listens,<\/p>\n Not to the play, but to itself, expressed<\/p>\n In an emotion as of two people, as of two<\/p>\n Emotions becoming one. The actor is<\/p>\n A metaphysician in the dark, twanging<\/p>\n An instrument, twanging a wiry string that gives<\/p>\n Sounds passing through sudden rightnesses, wholly<\/p>\n Containing the mind, below which it cannot descend,<\/p>\n Beyond which it has no will to rise.<\/p>\n It must<\/p>\n Be the finding of a satisfaction, and may<\/p>\n Be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman<\/p>\n Combing. The poem of the act of the mind.<\/p>\n ~ Wallace Stevens<\/p>\n <\/p>\n