“Longfellow continually writes about disappointed hopes, the need to accommodate oneself to diminished expectations, and the pressures of coping with the fear that the reality of social or personal chaos is more than we can bear.”
Lawrence Buell, in the introduction to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Selected Poems
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Obloquy – verbal abuse of a person or thing, censure or vituperation*, especially when wide-spread or general
Purveyor – one who purveys (to purchase and supply provisions, especially for a number of people)
Verity – truthfulness
” “With me,” Longfellow once noted, “all deep impressions are silent ones. I like to live on, and enjoy them, without telling those around me that I do enjoy them.” Remarks like these suggest that the image of Longfellow as a comfortable, reassuring white-bearded purveyor of the accepted verities – the basis of both his late-Victorian fame and his mid-twentieth-century obloquy – has mistaken the surface for the totality of his mind.”
Lawrence Buell, in the introduction to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Selected Poems
*Vituperate – to speak abusively to to or about; to berate; to revile
(Wow, that was a lot of new words at once!)
It’s a coffee kind of morning. To be more precise, Creme Brûlée coffee and my Jesus & Coffee mug. Now I’m ready to sit down to my newest undertaking: a swashbuckling pirate story! I have no idea what I’m going to do with it. It came to me in the middle of the night about a week ago. Or rather, one or two plot lines came to me. Is this how writers write? Decide on a character, decide on a few great scenes, and spend the majority of their time figuring out how to link those few great scenes together? I’ve been thinking about it all week. It took me that long to decide on names for the pirate and the princess.
Here is a glimpse of the next few posts I intend to write:
- I finished the audiobook of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. I won’t spend a lot of time on Jane, but I do want to tell you a little about why I hate the story but love the style. I know, shocking! There’s a classic that I am not fond of? Yes!
- I am currently in the middle of the audiobook North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell. I love this story, I definitely love the movie with Richard Armitage, but I never read the book ’til now. I intend to compare for you the similarities and differences between North and South and Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice. You can’t tell with the movies just how alike they are. Once I realized Just how alike they were (about seven hours into the eighteen hour audiobook), that’s all I could think of. And it makes North and South that much better.
Those are the two big posts I will write the immediate future, so stay tuned! I also have some more new words and quick quotes to add this week. Such big writing plans, but for this morning, Pirates! Happy Reading!
Urbane – courteous in manners; polite; suave; elegant or refined
“It is true that Longfellow strove to present an unruffled, humane, urbane face to the world. The motto on his personal bookplate was non clamor, sed armor: not clamor, but love.”
Lawrence Buell, in the introduction to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Selected Poems
Taciturnity – the quality or state of being taciturn (habitually silent; not apt to talk)
“When Longfellow wrote a grief-stricken acquaintance that “there are natures whose native strength and elasticity enable them to endure the worst, and yet live,” he was stating from experience a principle to which he clung in his own way as tenaciously as Hemingway did to his code of masculine taciturnity or Emerson to his self-imposed emotional detachment from all but his immediate family and sometimes even them.”
Lawrence Buell, in the introduction to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Selected Poems
Palatial – of, like, or suitable for a palace; hence, large and ornate; stately; magnificent
“Throughout [Longfellow’s] life, he attached an extremely high value to politeness, common courtesy, dignity, and good citizenship, as well as to domestic comforts of a level of elegance that Ralph Waldo Emerson, on his visits to Cambridge from small-town Concord, found disorientingly palatial.”
Lawrence Buell, in the introduction to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Selected Poems
Last Christmas, I watched a movie called I Heard the Bells based on the story of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the events that led up to his penning the beloved Christmas poem “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”. Until then, I hadn’t learned much of Longfellow and had read even less. I did know he wrote a lot of long poems, so I didn’t want to invest in a large, expensive volume ’til I knew if I liked his poetry. So I purchased this little paperback from Penguin Classics. Some of the poems included are “Evangeline”, “The Courtship of Miles Standish”, “A Psalm of Life”, and “The Village Blacksmith”.
The introduction is by Lawrence Buell. I’ve only read part of the introduction so far, but I learned so much about Longfellow that I can’t wait to read his poems. Did you know that he was a master of five languages: English, French, Spanish, Italian, and German? And he could read in six more. He taught at Harvard until he decided to write poetry as his profession; he was the first American poet to do so. He lost two wives – the first after a miscarriage in Europe, the second in an accident when her dress caught fire. Longfellow knew deep love and deeper sorrow. I am really looking forward to reading these poems. Though, as with all poetry, I will have to read it slowly. Poetry, you see, should be read in small portions, both so you can take the whole meaning of a poem in to ponder and so you don’t get discouraged by misunderstanding.
Have you read any poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow? I would love to know which ones you like so I can read them too.
Disaster struck on Saturday, June 10. I was in a quiet mood, and wrote the following lines…
Yes, it is Saturday, June 10, 2023. Somehow, almost a full month has passed since I wrote anything on this blog. Never fear, I have written some other things – a few poem drafts and a Journeys for Christ devotional. I haven’t been reading much lately, to my chagrin. As the song so eloquently says, “Swiftly flow the days… swiftly fly the years.”
With that in mind, I realize I need to set some new goals. I need to finish Lion in the White House, the Roosevelt biography I started and so carelessly set aside. I also need to start pursuing more poetry. I started my new Longfellow volume but haven’t finished the introduction. And I need to finish my little “quick read”, Lyddie, which I started a few weeks ago when I only had a few moments to read.
… Then, as I took sip of tea, the cup fell from my fingers. A flood of London Fog Latte covered my laptop, my chair, my floor, even a few of my books. I was devastated! I was angry with myself and with my cup and with my chair. It wasn’t a loud anger. It was a scary, quiet anger. As quickly as I could, once the shock wore off, I rushed for the kitchen sink. Perhaps I could save the laptop by letting it drip into the sink for a few hours. But when twenty-four hours had lapsed, I still could not turn the laptop on.
That’s when it hit me. If I couldn’t turn the laptop on, how would I ever save my writings? My poems and devotionals that weren’t posted on the blog. Had I lost most of my written work from the last year? Like a fool, I haven’t been using a separate backup for saving my works. This is an accident that couldn’t happen to me, right? I won’t be foolish like that again.
For about a week, I moped. I was grateful the blog could autosave my Saturday post. Most of my devotionals were saved on the blog also. But I only have a few poems on a private page, not yet ready to be shared with the world. The rest were saved to my desktop. (In the future, I plan to keep my poems on the blog as well as my computer so they won’t be lost like this again.)
I ordered a new laptop, received it Thursday, and started to set up all my old programs and passwords. A new laptop should be exciting! It should be fun! But the longer I stared into the new screen, the more devastated I felt. Most of the week, I tried to keep an optimistic spirit, but as I stared at the blank desktop, the empty folders, and my failed attempts to retrieve anything from old emails, my spirits sunk. They sunk so much that I even shed a few tears Friday when I was telling a friend what happened.
Then – a miracle! – Friday night, my husband plugged the ruined laptop in to see if anything had changed in the week it had been out of commission. The screen lit up! As quickly as I could, I started a transfer program from the old laptop to the new. The old one died three times from overheating before I had the idea to set it up on its screen and blow a fan at the hard drive to keep it cool. In about thirty minutes, everything from my old laptop was transferred to the new. Joyous occasion! All of my poetry, devotionals, spreadsheets, everything was transferred and saved. How can I describe the flood of relief that washed over me when I started to move the poems to their own folder and the devotionals to theirs? I even had a few years of check register spreadsheets that I use to balance my bank accounts.
As I write this, I wonder if you will think me silly. The spill was my fault. Not using external backups was my fault. And was I truly devastated? That’s such a strong word – one used when a dear friend is airlifted to the hospital or a close family member dies. But a computer? Should I be devastated about a computer? I didn’t like to think so at first, but the longer I thought about my lost writings, the more I felt it was an appropriate word. When I write, I put my whole self – my emotions, thoughts, and feelings – into it. I labor during the writing process and again during editing. I love some of the things I write, and so I reread them and correct them over and over. So, yes, I was devastated. I felt I had lost not only hours of labor and emotion, but also some dear literary friends. And that is why it was such a relief to recover them. To read them again. To think those thoughts and feel those emotions again.
I am not a published author. Sometimes I feel I am barely a writer, much less a poet. But I want to be one day. I am working toward that end. And now I don’t have to start over. I can keep moving forward.
Dear readers, you can see I have had a few weeks of pent up emotions. I needed to write them out, and I have chosen you to be the recipients of my story. This is not my typical Saturday morning post. I know it is very long. I hope you haven’t tired of my story, but if you have, that’s ok. I’ve finished telling it. Except to say I strongly suggest – and will take this suggestion myself as well – if you are a writer, or an artist of any kind, who uses technology, keep a separate backup of all your art. Save it once, then again somewhere else that you can access if your main computer goes down. Don’t lose your art friends, as I nearly did.
Now a short addition for Saturday, June 24, 2023. After enjoying a morning cup of London Fog Latte (the whole thing this time) and Cinnamon Apples, I will be adding a few new words to the blog. I will also be writing my July Journeys for Christ devotional. After that, I plan to tell you about the three audiobooks I listened to over the last month. Whew! That’s a lot of writing if I don’t get distracted! I hope you have a lovely Saturday!
May is slipping away, isn’t it? Today is my sixth wedding anniversary. We had a nice, quiet day at home with good food and happy cats. I finished writing my June devotional, and I will make that available to you on my Journeys for Christ page the first week of June. I hope it will be an encouragement to you.
Today has been a nice day for tea. I started the day with a mug of hot chocolate with matcha, then had a cup of strawberry limeade tea, and now I’m drinking chai. Tea and books are a such a good combination.
Hattie is sleeping next to me while I type. She looked so happy I had to share this picture.
I haven’t written many blog posts lately, but I’ll be returning to regular reading and posting soon. I started a new poetry book this week: a volume of selected works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I also read a few more chapters on Roosevelt. And I’m about to begin an audiobook – one I’ve listened to before and absolutely love. I look forward to sharing bits and pieces of these books with you over the next few weeks. But today, this is all I can write. Happy Reading!
This afternoon is a 2-mugs-of-green-tea afternoon. It doesn’t hurt that one serving of my loose leaf green tea will make two cups. Today has been a slow day for me. Sadly, I haven’t read a lot this week, so I don’t have many updates, except to say that I will be working on my own poetry for the next few hours. I don’t think I’m a very good poet, but Mary Oliver said if you discipline yourself to work on your poetry, eventually poetry will find you. So that is what I am doing today. What are you working on today?
