15 &16/1001 - Tuchman

Yesterday, I didn't read a short story. The next one in my book (50 Great Short Stories) was The Lottery, and I just wasn't feeling it. I reached for Capon's The Supper of the Lamb instead and felt I made the right choice.

Earlier in the day, I listened to several chapters in Barbara Tuchman's collection of essays called Practicing History. It is so enjoyable to listen to an independent expert in their field discuss their not just their trade but dig into their tool box and explain the "gear, tackle, and trim" that they use in their work. Plus, she is a pleasure to read. I listened to the chapter today on the kidnapping of Americans living in Morrocco during Teddy Roosevelt's presidency and felt that I was following the story right along, even though I didn't know any of the players (other than T.R.) or the political situation in the US or Morrocco during the events. It didn't matter. She told the story well, and I followed it well - well enough to narrate it to my husband. Her skill as a writer overcame all my ignorance. 

I don't often read history because it can often lack the story quality of a confident narrative and feel more like an extended text book entry. I'm finding that there are historians who are also excellent communicators, and Barabar Tuchman is definitely one of the company.

I read this article today, too. It was a moving personal tribute to a poet that I have a passing acquaintance with. When I read it, it felt beyond me, and it probably was. I have been drawn to poetry for as long as I can remember, but in a kind of way that was more in line with Simon Magus than Simon Peter, if I can use that as a metaphor. I wanted to create something beautiful, to arrange words in ways that stirred other people as the poems I read moved me. But reading poetry in that attitude is not really the attitude of the listener. It's more like the person waiting for you to shut up so they can finally talk. After reading poetry regularly for most of my life, and attempting to write it, too, and only managing exceptionally awful verse, I'm becoming more and more convinced that just reading it isn't enough, though it's most of what makes up an appreciation of poetry. It's not merely reading, but how we are reading; our attitude and posture. Am I reading to listen? Am I reading to hear something new to enjoy and contemplate? Or am I reading to puff myself up? Or idea-hunting? Or to inspire my own poetic sense and study a master at work? Most of these aren't bad reasons to read poetry, but above all these must be simple enjoyment. Reading poetry to read poetry and see something familiar in a new light, or maybe to see something new to us through eyes that are familiar with it and can guide us through an experience of it.

to read more of his poetry. 

I've noticed that as I've spent time reading poetry every day for the last year, my mind turns to poetic phrases more often. I'm not writing poetry regularly (I think I wrote 2 poems in total this last year) so I'm not reading to dig and mine. Just by taking regular walks through poetry, so to speak, I'm noticing similarities and connections and enjoying hearing authors harmonize across the years and styles.

Anyway, I feel like I could pick up Heaney and potentially enjoy him and understand him more than I did the first time I read him. Learning to listen and be silent, even when I don't understand - maybe especially when I don't understand - is a lifelong practice. But silent contemplation is the schoolmates leading us deepr into poetry.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/01/poet-seamus-heaney-berkeley/680757/

Poem: 

Matthew VIII,28 ff

by Richard Wilbur

Rabbi, we Gadarenes

Are not ascetics; we are fond of wealth and possessions.

Love, as You call it, we obviate by means

Of the planned release of aggressions.

We have deep faith in properity.

Soon, it is hoped, we will reach our full potential.

In the light of our gross product, the practice of charity

Is palpably non-essential.

It is true that we go insane;

That for no good reason we are possessed by devils;

That we suffer, despite the amenities which obtain

At all but the lowest levels.

We shall not, however, resign

Our trust in the high-heaped table and the full trough.

If You cannot cure us without destroying our swine,

We had rather You shoved off