Hannah F. Hudson Portfolio

Here’s a great poem for today. you can read pretty interesting interpretation of it here.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look!
my last, or next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

– Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied.
It’s evident the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.

I just finished rereading The catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger. It is one of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors. Anyway, I love the passage in the book where he explains what would make him happy. For those who don’t know the entire book is very pessimistic the the first person narrator Holden Caulfield has a bleak outlook on life. Practically everything depresses him. But the redemptive passage is when his sister asks him what would make him happy. It’s so beautiful I think it makes sense that it would be the title of the book. I’ve included it here:

Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.

The reference is from a poem by Robert Burns. It is also quite a beautiful poem.

Comin Thro’ The Rye

O, Jenny’s a’ weet, poor body,
Jenny’s seldom dry:
She draigl’t a’ her petticoatie,
Comin thro’ the rye!

Comin thro’ the rye, poor body,
Comin thro’ the rye,
She draigl’t a’ her petticoatie,
Comin thro’ the rye!

Gin a body meet a body
Comin thro’ the rye,
Gin a body kiss a body,
Need a body cry?

Gin a body meet a body
Comin thro’ the glen,
Gin a body kiss a body,
Need the warl’ ken?

Gin a body meet a body
Comin thro’ the grain;
Gin a body kiss a body,
The thing’s a body’s ain.
Gin a body kiss a body
Comin’ thro’ the grain
Need a body grudge a body
What’s a body’s ain

Every lassie has her laddie
Nane, they say, ha’e I
yet a’ the lads they smile at me
When comin’ thro’ the Rye

Amang the train, there is a swain
I dearly lo’e mysel’
But whaur his hame, or what his name
I dinna care to tell

I’m working on an art piece for this novel, but it’s not at a place where I have much to show right now.

The faint buzz of swollen noise

Lies in my hearing.

The room swelling & swaying through the

Words hurled at my brain.

The overexposed branches rise up

Behind the tiled grey triangles.

The flushed sky an indistinct thick paste-

Colorless-

Lies heavy above us.

The tone of urgency quick & clipped- slightly reprimanding.

“Fill your mind” before the words dart & bounce

& disappear quicker than little foxes

darting into the cracks in the room. Seeping

through the door & the floor.

Before lies a million tiny hairs stretching

Out their fingers, cautious – waiting

For the unexpected guillotine to quench

Their effort – merciless

& unqualifying.

Deep thin canyons line perpendicular

Fingers. Slowly spreading into

Unidentified grids of red texture.

Clear to blurry to clear. The world fades

In & out slowly, slowly, the

Lid is sinking down – Vignetting

into blackness.

Being led- forced – into a frame work

The cattle drivers of our mental formation

Grates the independent spark that

Flutters, spits, sparks &

Sometimes shrinks so small

-it seems almost nothing is there at

all.

But then the fact of

Oppression comes roaring

Back into a flood of fire.

Life truly is an open

Road stretching far and

Bowling around us. A

Soup of the conglomerate circumstances.

Vaults slamming – flashes

Of strong memory. Strange

Bits- ragged torn-

Blow up & disappear.

Strange- forgotten

Hunger- forgotton

Memory of hunger. Why

Do mouths move in

The rhythm of cyclical

Chewing? Daily, monthly,

Yearly- out of necessity

Or pattern? Living breeds

(thoughts) – thoughts

begat action-

the

nature of Sound & Life

&memory. Grab the rope

the splintered strands

together give strength

to the whole. In life is hope.

I have been thinking about the balance of things in life. As a student, it is hard to juggle all the different aspects of life. And I don’t think I have been doing a very good job of that recently. For class we had to read a few of Sir Philip Sidney’s Elizabethan sonnets. Here is one of them that has to do with sleep. I have been thinking a lot about that as well recently because of the lack I am getting.

39
Come sleep! O sleep the certain knot of peace,
The baiting place of wit, the balm of woe,
The poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release,
Th’ indifferent judge between the high and low;
With shield of proof shield me from out the prease
Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw:
O make in me those civil wars to cease;
I will good tribute pay if thou do so.
Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,
A chamber deaf to noise and blind to light,
A rosy garland, and a weary head:
And if these things, as being thine by right,
Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me
Livelier than elsewhere Stella’s image see.

How does one juggle the balance of living with schoolwork and everything else that creeps into our busy days? I know that most people’s life in this age is driven by speed. But why does this have to be? I had a good talk with a professor today about several things, one of them being balance. He had good advice. Sometimes, if it’s getting to be too much, we may just need to drop something and let it go. It could just be that you resign yourself to a zero on that project. He asked me if I could do that. And honestly, being the perfectionist and academic student that I am, I think that failure is one of the hardest things to deal with. I don’t know if I could resign myself, even if it is killing me. That is what I am learning: how to be in that place- where failure may happen and even be necessary for survival. It’s the hardest lesson of all.

Poem for the Day

The pedigree of honey
Does not concern the bee;
A clover, any time, to him
Is aristocracy.

~Emily Dickinson

At first I was reading poetry, looking for inspiration for the title of a book that my class is collaborating on. Then I was just mesmerized by the pages of beautiful ideas and I lay back and read. Here is one poem I want to share that is especially beautiful.

I started again; where everything starts:
at the body. Classes in life-drawing,
training my hand to see.

In Paris alone,
my family waiting for me to give up
so I could go back to being “happy.”

Every day, failure boiled up into my throat
and stayed there.

.

Obsession is the sacrifice of light
to the richness of submergence.
But love is separation,
the membrane of the orange dividing itself,
the surface of silver
that turns glass into a mirror.

There’s failure in every choice.

Art emerged from silence;
silence, from one’s place in the world.

~Anne Michaels from “Modersohn – Becker”