Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Highlight Poetry (#1)

highlight poetry

 

A Bit of an Introduction to Highlight Poetry

     For a little while now I've been itching to start a meme but everytime I set about thinking up a theme or a name for it, I'd inevitably end up with an idea that somebody else had already come up with. Eventually I decided that I wanted to focus on something that is important to me and not recognized nearly enough; poetry. And bingo! Highlight Poetry crossed my mind as a good self-explanatory name for a meme that focused on highlighting (acknowledging) poetry. So when I searched "Highligh Poetry" in both the regular google search engine and google's blog search engine and could not find any results for a meme name "Highlight Poetry" I knew I had found the name for my meme!

The First Poem of Highlight Poetry

Embarking at Night

F. Scott Fitzgerald
1920
"We leave to-night...
  Silent, we filled the still, deserted street,
    A column of dim gray,
  And ghosts rose startled at the muffled beat
    Along the moonless way;
  The shadowy shipyards echoed to the feet
    That turned from night and day.
  And so we linger on the windless decks,
    See on the spectre shore
  Shades of a thousand days, poor gray-ribbed wrecks...
    Oh, shall we then deplore
  Those futile years!
              See how the sea is white!
  The clouds have broken and the heavens burn
    To hollow highways, paved with gravelled light
  The churning of the waves about the stern
    Rises to one voluminous nocturne,
                  ...We leave to-night."

 

A Brief Commentary Providing a Bit of Context

This Side of Paradise    I discovered this poem a couple of days ago while reading  F. Scott Fitgerald's This Side of Paradise. For those of you who are not familiar with Fitzgerald's works, This Side of Paradise is a ficitonal novel about a rather egotistical young man named Amory. Though the novel itself is not a book of poetry, through the character Amory, Fitzgerald writes several poems of which Embarking at Night was one . At the point in the novel when this poem is included, Amory is heading off to fight in the first world war and is presumably writing the poem about his emotions while he waits to embark in the night on the journey of a soldier.

    I absolutley love this poem, I think it is beautifully written, providing haunting imagery of a soldier's restless wait before he heads off to war. Through this poem Fitzgerald allows the reader to feel as if they themselves are mourning the futile years ahead and the "poor gray-ribbed wrecks" that will fall during the war. I felt as if I was truly transported to another time, while reading this poem, like I could hear the waves breaking upon far off shores and the feel the soldier's fear as he prepared to embark.

What are your thoughts? What struck you most about Emarking at Night?

To learn more about how you can get involved in Highlight Poetry click here.

5 comments:

  1. I was a lit major and read a bunch of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Great post, I love just about any type of poetry :) New follower from blogaholic, I look forward to your future posts! You can find me at
    http://wvfrugal-wvsaver.blogspot.com

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    1. Thanks for visiting! I'm now following you through GFC :) F. Scott Fitzgerald is most certainly a wonderful writer !

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  2. Hey Sarah,
    Just nominated your blog for the Sisterhood Award
    RB :)

    http://reflectivebookworm.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/sisterhood-of-the-world-award.html

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  3. When you look back at some of the great poetry, it was way back when our society was not nearly as visual as we are now.
    NO TELEVISION - NO COMPUTERS - Even photography was rather new.
    The populace relied on WORDS for their visual. Poets delivered.
    Wonderful of you Sarah to be promoting ~poetry~.

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    1. Even today I find that words are one of the most important visuals in our society. Without words, we would not have television shows because there would be no screen writers, nor would there be any movies without scripts for that actors to read. But even still poetry is not nearly as big a part of our society as it should be; I'm so glad you agree :D
      -Sarah

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