Riotously Realized Dreams and New Friends

(A bit belated, as I'm easily distracted)

First: I am in no way a football fan, in fact, I'm pretty rabidly anti-football, but there is something to be said for a city, no--a whole state-- so full of electric ecstasy, of pure, shrieking feeling so thick and real you could swim through it, slather it on your soul. In the end, I still appreciate the story of the underdog's triumph. Also, it's nice to have Louisiana come out on top once in a while. So congratulations, Saints.

Second: I have a new best friend and constant companion, courtesy of my poetry writing class: Robert Lowell, father of the Confessionalist movement. Of course, he's dead, so I'll have to get to know him through one of his books, Life Studies, which I am to keep on me at all times. I am to converse with and consult him on various things (pizza toppings, life changing decisions, etc.). Again, this is using the book of course. Reminiscent of Ouija, I'm to ask the question, and randomly flip to a page and point to a line, which is his response. As dorky as it sounds, I was kind of excited when this was assigned. I like making friends! Luckily, we seem to be getting along so far. I'm glad my ghost oracle isn't Sylvia Plath, I heard she can be kind of a bitch. Here was our first Q&A session:

Q: So, Robert Lowell, what’s our relationship going to be like?

A: faced with this opinion, pored over his book of instructions

Q: Way to be literal, Robert. How do you feel about this inhospitable winter?

A: sensationally sober

Q: What did you think about the 50s?

A: At last the trees are green on Marlborough Street.

Q: Rather positive. How would you have lived your life differently?

A: it was the eroding necessity of moving with him, of keeping in step.

Q: What was most valuable to you?

A: Those dinners, those apologies!

Since then, he has also instructed me to go home because I was sick, laughed with my over the drunken antics of my boyfriend & co., and chided me for not doing my homework. I'd say we're off to a great start. In honor of our new friendship, I'll post one of his poems here.

Epilogue by Robert Lowell

Those blessèd structures, plot and rhyme--
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
something imagined, not recalled?
I hear the noise of my own voice:
The painter's vision is not a lens,
it trembles to caress the light.
But sometimes everything I write
with the threadbare art of my eye
seems a snapshot,
lurid, rapid, garish, grouped,
heightened from life,
yet paralyzed by fact.
All's misalliance.
Yet why not say what happened?
Pray for the grace of accuracy
Vermeer gave to the sun's illumination
stealing like the tide across a map
to his girl solid with yearning.
We are poor passing facts,
warned by that to give
each figure in the photograph
his living name.

Thanks, Robert. Rob? Bobby? Still haven't settled on what to call him. I'll ask him about it later.