If you’d asked me beforehand which book I’d write about for a blog post, I would not have thought it would be a book with 1403 pages. Obviously not. I mean who even reads books with 1403 pages nowadays?! Also, not one with a less than inspired cover (I’m very particular about book covers and this one has nothing on it; it’s just plain aubergine all over with a spatter of white lettering). And I would definitely not have thought I’d ever write something about a book with the soul-destroying title ‘Literature -Structure, Sound, and Sense’. But I’m going to now.
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Ever since last week I’d been wracking my brain as to what to say during my 95-year-old-dearest-great-auntie-more-like-a-grannie’s funeral service. In the end I decided the best celebration of her life (which she’d spent largely with my other great-auntie, who passed away a couple of years before) was to recite a short, hopeful, and comforting poem.
Poetry has always been a bit out of my comfort zone. Actually, if I’m being completely honest, my understanding of black holes and poems are on equal par (as in no understanding whatsoever). So although I’ve been known to have written my fair share of angsty poetry in my younger years, I cannot pretend to ever have had the talent, patience or the will to open myself up to this particular art form.
The proof is in the pudding. I have two wafer-thin booklets of poems hiding out on a bookshelf in my living room. One is a booklet given to me as a present years and years ago. That person obviously thought rather more highly of me than I deserved. The other is a booklet that came out in the 90s, when the classic ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral‘ was first screened. It has ten translated poems in it by W.H.Auden. And it was a freebie.
Don’t get me wrong, I would have loved to be that person who reads (and actually understands) poetry. I am told poems can be very effective sensemaking devices, be of great comfort, and -in the words of Marie Kondo 1.0- can even spark joy. But to me they have always sparked a crippling sense of anxiety.
Flashback
A flashback to my school days. I remember trying to get out of writing an essay about one incomprehensible poem by telling the teacher that I am principally against dissecting a poet’s obvious work of art. The teacher didn’t fall for that one. And on another occasion (and this I still feel guilty about) I’d made up a health scare so as to get out of my oral exam on poetry.
All this reminiscing had given me a sudden brainwave. Don’t I still have that extremely fat book somewhere, the one we had to use during English class?! Into my study I go (where my long-forgotten school and university books sit collecting dust, in the hope that one day I will bestow upon them just a little bit of the attention they craved all those years ago but never received). I take out a remarkably pristine aubergine bible of a book: the sixth edition of ‘Literature -Structure, Sound, and Sense’. I briefly think that I could probably sell it as ‘new’ on the internet…
As I open it up, I am automatically taken back to that oral exam time. I remember having to pick a handful of poems to discuss during the exam. I see that my teenage self had circled the poems by Emily Dickenson and Robert Frost. These were obviously the easiest poets in my teenage mind (with some of the shortest poems). Oh wait, I also see three John Keats poems circled. Yay! My teenage self has redeemed herself! Ah, no. It’s all coming back to me now. The Keats poems were mandatory for the exam.
It takes me well into the small hours of the morning to pick a poem. Turns out that good old Emily wrote a whole lot of rather bleak poems with the word ‘death’ in them. Not the vibe I’m going for. The funeral blues one by W.H.Auden just reminds me of the Four Weddings scene when the older man prancing around in a kilt suddenly drops dead of a heart attack. Maybe not. Robert’s ‘The Road not Taken’…nope. What about…? That’s when I nod off.
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The day of the service. A small but dedicated gathering of third generation relatives and remaining friends pay their last respects to a loving, warm-hearted, wise, religious, adventurous, and compassionate lady who loved life. We all share our condolences with each other (there isn’t a line or anything). My great aunties came from the outer ends (the northern and southern provinces) of the Netherlands; the small reception area is largely filled with Frisians and those that come from Zeeland. All of the hardworking, frugal, and no-nonsense persuasion. No pressure then for my imminent recital.
I’ve got this, I say to myself. In the end I’ve gone for Emily Dickenson’s ‘Hope is a thing with feathers’. Short but sweet, and no mention of death. The version I’m reciting has become a patchwork of translated sentences; each of the translated versions I found online had some good and some slightly off wording. So at 2:00 in the morning, I consulted my inner Chat GPT and came up with the version I am going to recite now. I’m sure the room will forgive me; it’s not like I’m doing an oral exam or anything.
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I’m sorry to have to confess that I completely messed it up; I had a full-blown breakdown, right then and there on the church pulpit. Imagining the Frisians rolling their eyes and the ‘Zeelanders’ shake their heads in obvious disappointment, it only goes from bad to worse. My waterfall tears start mingling with the river of snot coming out of my nose. After the service a few people give me some well-meant but less than reassuring pats on the back (these stoic northerners and southerners don’t really do hugs).
Looking back, all I can do is sigh. And I decide that the best tribute I can think of paying to my auntie is to take a page from my her book of life: always be forgiving and compassionate and never be judgemental of somebody else (in this case myself). So on this sunny Sunday morning I am happy to say that I’ve finally closed ‘Literature -Structure, Sound, and Sense’ and put it back where it belongs, collecting dust in my study.
Sensemaking.blog 