C is for Coleridge

In my first semester of college freshman English we read Ars Poetica by Archibald MacLeish, and I distinctly remember our professor reading the line "Silent as the sleeve-worn stone of casement ledges where the moss has grown".  The class grew quiet and watched as he stepped over to the window, and with a far-away look in his eyes, ran his fingers over the ledge.  It was such a simple gesture, but that line, that poem, and poetry in general came alive for me that day.  I devoured works by 20th century writers like Eliot and Frost, but, oh, the poets of the Romantic and Victorian periods spoke to me!  My favorite poem is Ulysses by Tennyson, and his words resonate in a new and more meaningful way than ever before:

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

After my Dad's cancer diagnosis, he told me that three things were helping him cope - his love of God, his love of family, and his love of poetry.  I've sat with him through several rounds of chemo which can last up to 5 hours.  His favorite poet is Keats, so on one of those long days in the infusion room I googled my Dad's favorite poems by Keats on my iPad and read them aloud.   Then I googled some of my favorite poems and read those aloud, too.  There is beauty and power in poetry, which I had forgotten, and a really long, tiring day became a little bit brighter. After years of being "too busy", I've started to slowly rediscover and enjoy poetry again.

We're all fighting a demon, and for my Dad and me, that demon is cancer.  We often quote the lines below, as a reminder that we have control over our attitude and tenacity in that fight.  So I close this post in honor of my Dad, with the words of Dylan Thomas:

And you, my father, there on the sad height, 

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.  

Do not go gentle into that good night.  

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.