April 1– Assorted Poems by Robert Browning (18XX) (A is for April)

 Browning reads "How They Brough The Good News From Ghent to Aix"

April 1– Assorted Poems by Robert Browning (18XX)

Summary: A bunch of poems, mostly about missing home.

Commentary: If you're here from A to Z, welcome, take a seat, leave a comment. Over the next month I'll be doing exactly what I've done all year on this blog, reading the daily selection from The Harvard Classics with a little commentary. If you're lucky, I put a related song or clip or something. The only change is that every day I have to find a way to link the entry to the day's letter. I've got about a third of the month mapped out already, so it should be a fun, but not too challenging, puzzle. Except the weird letters.

Tonight's was especially easy, with April being in both the selection heading and one of the poems:

O, TO be in England

Now that April’s there,

I really appreciate that most or all of Browning's line breaks occur in natural places. I hate when I'm reading a poem and it's like:

Her lips were

red and her

eyes were blue

and her toes

were yellow

Occasionally there's something to be said for being deliberately awkward to try to shake up your reader, but I feel like a lot of poets are just sloppy/don't think about it enough/get forced into awkward lines to fit their meter.

For comparison, here's the opening of "How They Brought The Good News [...]"

I SPRANG to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;

I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;

‘Good speed!’ cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew;

‘Speed!’ echoed the wall to us galloping through;

Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,

And into the midnight we galloped abreast.

Nice and clean. Flows well.

Equally appreciated are the unforced rhymes. We've had several poetry selection in T5FSOB where you get really awkward lines lines just to get them to rhyme. They reminded me of when you write a poem in second grade. Who cares whether "I will drive a car in a star with a bar really far!" makes sense (and honestly, that's better than some of them...) you just gotta get those rhymes in.

Hark, ’tis the sparrows’ good-night twitter

Was the Twitter bird a sparrow? Remember the "good old days" when a lot of tech nerds were nerds in general and into classic literature and stuff? Some still are, but they get shouted down by the crpyto-lib-bros.

Fun set of poems tonight, great way to start the month. I hope all you new A to Z peeps have a good time following along.