The Painful Nowning Process

April is National Poetry Month. I have many favorite poets, but among those who immortalized April, we must acknowledge Geoffrey Chaucer, who reminds us (via the mysterious ChaucerBlogger) that

Bifor Aprille was the cruellest moneth (whatever that meneth!), it was a moneth of coloures and cries, and pilgrymages.

Hear! Hear! Or as Chaucer would have said (perhaps), “Oyez, oyez!”

One of my favorite poems by Chaucer, read aloud in Middle English:

“Truth” or the “Ballad of Good Counsel”

During April, the Academy of American Poets will e-mail you a Poem a Day. I make no representations to the value or appropriateness of said poems, but you can check out those that have been sent so far this month.

Recently I somehow managed to compare medieval studies definitions of literary sources and analogues, specifically Chaucerian sources and analogues, with some ways contemporary TV shows function as sources and analogues. So perhaps I was still thinking along those lines when I came across Joss Whedon’s take on a rhetorical scheme Chaucer uses frequently (which he learned from any number of other authors), the inexpressibility topos (among several stylistic devices). Here, with Whedon’s peculiar combination of poignant and laugh-out-loud funny, he shows us how NOT to describe the saddest song in the world. Genius is where you find it, I say. Or else, possibly, poetry is poetry.

In this post, after telling about his new job as clerk of the works, “Geoffrey” gets silly with the pilgrims’ portraits from the Ellesmere Manuscript. I covet the Chaucer portrait disclaiming his reincarnation as Springsteen.

I’m a longtime fan of reading poetry aloud. The earliest “literature” wasn’t written, it was spoken. Hearing a poem transforms it–for good or ill. A good poem becomes better. A poor poem reveals its poverty.

Last week, the poets laureate of the United Kingdom and the United States, Andrew Motion and Donald Hall, gave three dual poetry readings–probably a once-in-a-lifetime event.

Since none of us will be attending those readings, we can console ourselves any time with the modern/contemporary poetry mp3’s at PENNsound (including Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and some Chaucer read by David Wallace–fairly well). Or the Academy of American Poets also has a lot of poetry audio-clips online.

Fred Sanders of Scriptorium Daily blogs helpfully about the most rewarding way to read an allegory such as John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. I teach Pilgrim’s Progress frequently, as well as excerpts from Spenser’s Faerie Queene, which is also highly allegorical, but more complex than Bunyan. And of course, one persistent approach to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is to consider the pilgrimage to Canterbury as an allegory for the Pilgrimage of Life, although this perspective has fallen out of favor among the the literary leading lights, recently. I still think it works pretty well, but now that I’ve said that, some of my fellow medievalists will probably look at me funny next time I see them. Assuming they even read this.

In any case, thanks, Mr. Sanders.

In other news, it seems some newspapers are cutting back on book reviews–opinions vary on why–and the LA Times discusses the conflict between literary blogs and print or print-related official reviews. I’ll turn to the book review section first almost every time I get hold of a newspaper or magazine, but I guess in this, as in many things, I’m in the minority. Literary blogsites vary wildly, of course. But then, so do book reviews/reviewers. For now, I’m saying it’s a toss-up, although I don’t want print media of any kind to disappear.