hallieh24

Here we go again. 

In “Evolution” by Lisa Sewell, Lisa starts out by giving the reader a direct address. With the first line a scene is already laid out for the reader. She starts by stating,“You are talking on the telephone.” 

With the repetitive use of “you” in the first stanza, Lisa introduces the rest of this character’s daily possibilities. They are either annoyed at their day or their job, while they are talking to the person on the other end of the phone. Then Lisa throws in her first little piece of complexity. The poem’s character has taken for granted the small things life gives them, like waking up in the morning, “when suddenly” they utter a single world that changes their entire life. However, while looking at all the changes the character realizes something: the houses that surround them contain “a world formed while [their] back was turned.” 

The first and final shift of this poem is the introduction of the “spastic stomach” suffered by the first amphibian that sprouted gills to breathe for the first time. With this shift, Lisa introduces the idea of actual evolution to her poem. She details the experience for the amphibian through imagery and her thoughts on what he might have felt. And she ends by stating that his life before could now be characterized to him as “a kind of drowning.” 

I am forever amazed and confused at Lisa’s work. I will say it every time I write about her… she is incredibly frustrating. The entire time I am reading her work she always has me wondering, “Am I getting this right?” However, I think I got pretty close to the mark this time. What was really hard this time was 1) finding a poem that I could somehow stick in and say was about evolution and 2) analyze that five page horror. 

The horror as I mentioned before is truly not a horror, but rather very long and quite repetitive at times. BUT that is the most I will complain about this poem because (as you can tell by the title of this blog) my best friend forever Mr. Walt Whitman wrote it. In “As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free”, Walty starts off the way most of his poems do: in praise of America! Originally published in 1872, the poem’s first nine-ish stanzas are truly just his endless love for the country and his devotion to all its beautiful land and people, which is very important, but for the sake of this blog (and set word count:| ) I will get straight to the goods. With my favorite shift word, “YET”, Walt introduces the first little pieces of what I will call his idea of evolution. He states that “the Old World brain” will “haply” unfold to bring forth the ripening of the New World. The New World for Walt is also a “spiritual world” full of “poems, CHURCHES”, and other things. So, as one might guess, the description of evolution in this poem is very much the growth of the country, the birth of new people, and the growth of knowledge. Walt ends his poem by saying that “The Soul” is destined for more, so much more that only the “Future” can hold it because the “Present” is not vast enough for such growth. 

While these two poems are very different, I think they complement each other beautifully. Both show gorgeous thought and continual complexity and that is what truly makes a poem worth reading and deciphering. 

The word melancholy is one of my most favorite words to ever exist. It is a fancier, nicer sounding replacement for “depressed,” and who doesn’t like nicer-sounding fancy words? 

Lisa Sewell starts the poem “The Anatomy of Melancholy” like she does most of her poems: confusingly. I will never cease to be amazed with how this woman words things in a way that makes me actually have to work to understand the deeper meaning. Quite frankly, it is ridiculous. I have prided myself on how easy I understand poems and deeper meanings for as long as I can remember. It had to be Lisa who would confuse me. It definitely makes me annoyed with her … but it also definitely makes me adore her. 

As always, Lisa is the queen of alliteration and repetition. However, in this poem she chose to italicize multiple lines, and while I love an italic moment, I do not really understand the motivation behind the choice. The lines that are italicized do have a strong effect on the reader, but that doesn’t seem like motivation to italicize them to me. I need to know the reason! 

She opens with the introduction of a relationship, and I love how she writes about her relationship with brutal honesty. If I were her, I don’t think I would admit my shortcomings so openly. I would like to prove my point by referencing this stanza: 

“So when he lay face down on the bed

in broad daylight, all the curtains drawn,

and said, “I wish I was dead,”

why did I correct his grammar?”

Now, while I always love an elitist, grammar-correcting moment, if I had done this … I would personally deny it for the rest of my life.

Another thing that confused me in this poem was the use of multiple asterisks. I cannot tell if they are used for an organizational purpose, if they show an important passing of time or shift in thought, or if she simply liked the way they look. But I do know I need to be informed of their purpose immediately. 

Furthermore, I have already had a sad month and when Lisa brings up more sad things it does not help me escape from my sadness. Now that I’ve gotten my brief moment of unbelievable selfishness out of the way, I can move on to express how she is forever the most real person to ever exist, especially when she says things like “I have crying spells” and “ I have trouble keeping my mind.” Say it with me, #REAL. 

Although the poem covers different moments in the speaker’s life, I think what stood out the most to me was the slowly ending relationship that is described throughout the poem. It reminded me of Bon Iver’s cover of “I Can’t Make You Love Me”. One of the first stanzas in the poem explains how her boyfriend is fading out of love with her and it details certain aspects of their relationship he wishes could change. While explaining this, she also describes how these aspects are part of who she is. The lyrics “cause I can’t make you love me if you don’t, you can’t make your heart feel something it won’t” connect to this part of the poem by validating the fact that sometimes people can’t change and relationships end. The reason I chose Bon Iver’s version of this song is because the sound and the rhythm are slower and they fit better with the overall theme expressed in the poem.

After tirelessly analyzing this poem, I have come to the realization that it isn’t her brilliant writing that always sweeps me off my feet, it’s the tiny, beautiful, perfect phrases she throws in that I always find myself highlighting. Phrases like “mapping melancholy.” I mean that is probably the most beautiful way to say you’re analyzing your own depression I think I have ever read! 

Then, she really does it. The penultimate stanza really cut me deep. 

“He was going to get a memorial tattoo

of all the guys who were killed 

but there was no more room on his arm

below the elbow.”

Lisa! Tell me you are making a reference to how people are irrelevant after death and how no one cares about bomb victims after the actual bombing without telling me you are making the reference. 

The poem ends with the couple parting ways in a parking lot, and, honestly, I think it is probably for the best. He obviously has no actual driving force in life, and you definitely have some unresolved issues you need to work through. I’ll leave you with this, Lisa. “It’s okay to not be okay.” (792)

Love and annoyance to you always,

Hallie James Holt

“Chorale”, “The Way Out of the Hospital”, and “More or Less” by Lisa Sewell

1. Too hard: “Chorale”

Chorale:

1. musical composition consisting of a harmonized version of a simple tune. 

Well, obviously, I didn’t know what the title word meant… so I went into the poem confused. After searching up the definition, I was slightly more enlightened. 

In the poem, Lisa describes her “insomniac nights” and the “unhinged voices” that sing her through them. So I assume the “chorale” is not a pleasant one.

Then she starts to use words like “their” and “them” and that’s when I get confused. Normally, it’s easy to decipher who a person is referencing in a poem because of a later description or more apparent abstractness given to the object. 

For example, when Lisa first said “their” I thought she was referring to the “days” she had mentioned in the previous line. But as she continued she started to think about their weight and ability to sleep, things an abstract thing like a day would not have. 

She describes “their” songs as marking the boundaries of games she “won’t play.” 

What games, Lisa??

Next, she calls what I am assuming is Earth an “animal planet”, which, if that is the case, she’s so real for. After that, she finally gets to the “chorus” and I’m thinking  “Okay, here we go. Explanation.” 

But NO. 

Lisa is freeing voices to “carry across the water”.

Okay, Lisa. Sure. 

AND NOW she’s someone’s mother. But I’m guessing she isn’t a great one because she’s “giving up life” to “safeguard” her own, which (parenting 101) I am pretty sure isn’t a big maternal instinct. 

Then the chorale is a “ghost song” that’s all she has left. 

I need quite a thorough poem breakdown from Lisa if I am ever supposed to understand the meaning of this. 

2. Too easy: “The Way Out of the Hospital”

When I saw the title I was expecting a philosophical poem about death and transcendence because it’s a direct reference to the title of the book. 

Upon finishing the poem, I was a little underwhelmed. 

She went to the hospital, took some medicine, and left the hospital. And while I am a firm believer that there is always a deeper meaning… I’m not really getting it. 

She did word the whole thing really beautifully, but it wasn’t like she was describing some unique experience. We don’t even know why she’s in the hospital. I am guessing she’s depressed because it is winter (#relatable) or that maybe she had a breakdown. 

Either of those would be great things to write about. But instead she wrote about the hospital visit??

I’m hoping she’s using this as an outlet to express the dullness of the hospital and how happy she was to leave. Otherwise, meh. 

3. Just right: “More or Less” 

“What do you do when your friend says he doesn’t know how much longer he can do this — and this is everything:”. 

HOOK!

I think this poem is so beautiful because it doesn’t confuse you, but it also doesn’t over simplify things in a way that makes it boring. 

Lisa describes the struggles her friend is facing because of his “disease.” And while she details how she feels about him, she also describes her own personal need to repay him. 

To “make his unmaking palatable.” To make his dying something SHE could bear. Which is kind of self-centered :|, but, nonetheless, understandable. It also paints a really distinct view of Lisa’s thought process throughout the poem. 

She uses repetition, imagery, past connections, Lisa filled this poem up with literary devices!

She ends the poem by describing her friend’s love and how it’s “silent, full of forgiveness, and listening.” Which I think is so beautiful because it ties back to her feelings of needing to repay him and make up for “not writing.”

Or maybe I am just superficial and I think because it is a poem about losing your friend that it has some deep meaning. (600 words, not including quoted material :))

As a lifetime reader, I have a lot to say about books, the importance of reading, and my own personal experience about finding joy through books; however, since Mrs. Nester has only requested a description of four. I will have to limit my wide array, down to the most impactful, life-changing, and memorable books. 

 Mouse with a Blackberry: When I was two years old I had an obsession with books…well, with my mother reading me books. In particular I loved the book The Blackberry Mouse, or as I called it “Mouse with a Blackberry.”

It tells the story of Mouse and his blackberry bush. He loved his blackberries, but he was greedy with them. As countless neighborhood friends came by requesting a blackberry, he always said no.

Then when the mean Mr. Fox tried to steal his blackberries he was left helpless, but his friends came to the rescue and saved the blackberries by fighting off the nasty thief.

After his blackberries were returned, Mouse felt so awful that he had been rude to his friends, so he hosted a blackberry party and all his friends came. They had blackberry jam and tarts, and every summer after, when his blackberries bloomed, Mouse hosted a blackberry party for his friends.

Narnia: I was very much my father’s child when I was little, and so my favorite thing to do was watch the Narnia movies with him (he LOVED C.S. Lewis). When I was, I think, 10 my father gifted me his old Narnia books. I read them with such vigor and excitement that I literally wore out the spine. To this day I have dreams that I am in Narnia fighting the White Witch alongside the Pevensie siblings, and C.S. Lewis remains one of my favorite writers.

I read many other book series as a kid, but there is something so distinctly different about this one. It contains talking animals, christian references, but it doesn’t just follow one set of characters. This book series details so many different time frames, from the creation of Narnia to its destruction. It has so many characters, in fact, that at the front of each book there is a three-four page list of character descriptions. 

With the reading of these books (and the watching of the movies) came my first crush, Edmund Pevensie; my first daredevil moment, I was a skater girl for a year;  and my first heartbreak, the Pevensies had to leave and never return. My shouts of “they belong there” changed nothing: the books were written long before my birth.

A Separate Peace: Mrs. Hitt, wherever you are, you and this book changed my life. I am a reader because of this book. In the middle of the pandemic I read this book. I had given up on reading, and this book changed everything. I read a single chapter, and then I finished the rest in a single day.

A Separate Peace is the journey of main character Gene on his way through boarding school, friendship, and competition with his best friend Phineas. Along the way Phineas dies, Gene deals with guilt, and you watch as a boy turns back into a child and then into a man. The betrayal, the sadness, and just everything about it still draws me in today.

It has every quality a book should, boarding school, check; cute boys, check; death, check; sadness, check. The darkness and the relatability that tie together to make this book so wonderful is breathtaking. The skill John Knowles had to have in order to write this so perfectly is astonishing. I will forever be jealous of his talent, which as he taught us, is not a good thing to be.

People always say they would give anything to read a book again for the first time, this is that book. This is my book. If I had to sell my house, family, and dogs to re-read this book I would do it. (Anything but my Harry Styles collection.)

It is not even the death that is the impactful part of the book, it is the emotions and feelings that Gene went through after the fact that make this book so extraordinary. 10 out of 10 stars.

Looking For Alaska: Room 43, Miles Halter’s own personal prison. Just down the hall from the cigarette smoking, book collecting, and mentally unstable Alaska Young. This past summer I stole Looking For Alaska from Emily one random day while I was at her house. I read this old, smelly, perfect book in a total of 6 hours. John Greene, I love you.

His ability to write a male character that I was able to relate to is mind boggling. I have never related to a male character in all my life, had a crush on them yes, but never related to them. When I tell you I sobbed for my man, Miles, I mean I shook the whole house, the ground moved, and it was noted by seismic charts. My heart still has a tear in it from the emotions I went through with this book. My inability to put it down meant I went from smiling and laughing, to considering state assisted suicide in less than 2 hours. This book embodies some sort of distant life in my head that I truly believe I have lived through.

The realness is what dragged me in, or rather, the plain description that life sucked. As I first began to read it, it was Alaska that I was drawn to; the way she collected books throughout her life that if she hadn’t read yet she at least planned to. I love this because I am also guilty of collecting books.

Then she was a smoker. Now, while I am not a smoker, I definitely was in a past life because all I have to do is see the word cigarette and I get excited. I had cigarettes and books, I was already invested, and then Johnny had to go and throw in a curly-headed, brunette boy with a fascination for the girl next door and the meaning of life. It was as if he crawled into my brain, looked at my dreams awhile, and plagiarized each one. (You’re welcome, John…just by the way.)

We had roomie Chip, we were doing good in our classes, everything was great, and then freaking John decided to turn it into a total car crash (poor choice of words) and be a turd-butt. I hate this book. I also love it so much and would sell my soul for this book. It changed my life, my morals, and even my perspective. Slay, Johnny Boy, slay.