This month's Trial magazine has an amazing quote from Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem, Dirge Without Music. I can't resist putting it up here.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
Dirge Without Music, Edna St. Vincent Millay.
There's something about that poem that grabs at me, much like Tennyson's Ulysses grabs at me.
The other night, I was sitting in my corner of the Dublin House, basically doing my best to ignore everyone, scribbling away in my Moleskine. Laurel, a raven-haired regular at the bar who worked for a local theater, sat down next to me.
"Is that poetry?" She asked.
I looked up from my notebook, a little lost after being pulled away from writing. "Um, no... no, I really can't write poetry. It's, ah, well, it's..." I hesitated. "Well, I write stories."
"Oh that's right, I remember when we talked about --"
"Yeah," I interjected, "Right. Carver. The patron saint."
"I didn't realize that you weren't just into stories..." Laurel began.
"Yeah, well, you know." I took a swig of beer. "I need something to do when I'm not doing work."
"But not poetry?" Laurel had an impish grin. I shifted in my seat and reconsidered her.
"Oh, I did it in college. Terrible, overwrought shit. Not anymore."
"Were you published?"
I looked down and nodded slightly. "Yeah. Don't really even remember it. It was some sort of sardonic look at greatness. I had been reading a lot of Mary Shelley at the time."
"Same here."
"Really?"
"Yeah. It was cool."
"That's cool," I said. "You should bring it in some time."
"No...," Laurel laughed and shook her head. "I don't think so. So why did you stop writing poetry?"
"You're changing the subject." I smirked. Laurel pulled a cigarette from her indigo denim jacket.
"You bet your ass I am," she said.
"Okay, I won't press." I said. I lit her cigarette for her. "I stopped writing because of law school. I couldn't think poetically after that. I couldn't even read poetry for a while..." I looked off into space, thinking about the unread copy of Whitman that sat next to my bed for two years during law school. "It wasn't until I got out, I think, like, two or three months after the bar, that I was even able to read Frost or Eliot."
"Hm."
"Yeah. It's fine though. I like stories better. So how about you? Why'd you stop?"
Laurel laughed. "'Cause it was horrible. It was that girly... shit that every teenage girl writes..." She took on a throaty, dramatic voice. "Woe is me, it is all sorrow and dead flowers."
A recent conversation reminded me of the potential for legal education to change how I think. I never lost, as a result of law, that sense of enjoyment of the reckless and the beautiful, but I did lose a lot of my ability to think in a holistic, fuzzy sort of way. To think as I needed to in order to write poetry.
Some trades are necessary, and I suppose that was one of them. Odin gave up his eye; I gave up bad poetry. I don't think the world will miss it much. Still, it is nice to be able to be held breathless by verse, something I was not able to do for far too long.
I haven't made the trade and maybe that's why I've been so unsuccessful at the law.
Posted by: nicole bruni | Thursday, February 19, 2004 at 06:36 PM
see, you start ignoring everyone and suddenly all the chicks are tripping over themselves to talk to you.
me thinks you're on to something here.
Posted by: Kathleen | Thursday, February 19, 2004 at 07:59 PM
Nicole, keep on at it. Prepping for the bar is scary, but you'll endure.
Ah, Kathleen, you're going to make me blush.
Posted by: TPB, Esq. | Thursday, February 19, 2004 at 09:25 PM
Hmmm. I don't think I've ever been held breathless by verse.
Posted by: Courtney | Thursday, February 19, 2004 at 11:02 PM
Interesting. The only thing I can write is poetry. I'm hopeless at stories, mostly b/c I find writing dialogue to be one of the most difficult endeavors in the world.
Posted by: Daniel | Friday, February 20, 2004 at 11:49 AM
I've been feeling a strong pull these days toward the intuitive and the fuzzy and the holistic (as well as the reckless and the beautiful, which have always held me in thrall). it makes me feel a little schizophrenic or disconnected at work.
Posted by: Scheherazade | Friday, February 20, 2004 at 05:29 PM