Dec 5– Poems by Christina Georgina Rossetti (~1850)
Summary: Poems, mostly about death and remembering.
Commentary: Four shortish poems today, so speed round on each one, plus an overall note as a set.
Song: This is more or less how I feel about dying. Don't worry about me! Go live your own life.
Remember: I think this is a more reasonable take. I want people to mostly forget about me, but I recognize that they won't, and I think this is healthy balance.
Up-Hill: I guess this is showing range? Very different than the other.
In the Round Tower at Jhansi: I somehow missed the pistol line the first time I read this, and it's a very different (but still mostly working) poem without it.
I like this little poetry sampler, even as someone who doesn't love poetry. It helps that Christina writes like a human being instead of a generic poetry machine #9001. I think the fact that they're shorter helps. I like some longer poems (semi-abandoned Odyssey series will come back sometime before the end of the year), but shorter is nice (and I think it's hard to keep up poetry over a long stretch without having to do some real stretching to keep the form (or shifting into non-poemish poetry that would do better as narrative).
The first two together form a nice contrasting view of death. Both are healthy in their focus on the living more than the dead, while the first takes it to an almost excessive degree, while the second is more reasonably measured. Just forger about me vs don't worry about me.
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