I have been reading a lot of Herrick lately, between my current early modern poetry class and a thematic thing that I want to do next time I teach Brit Lit I. I read all of Herrick the summer after I finished grad school, sitting on the tiny patio of my old apartment with a glass of white wine and a bowl of strawberries; it seemed like fun, pleasant summer poetry then.
Coming to these poems once more, after six years and odd months in Deep South Town, after tenure, knowing that I will have much the same sort of life for the foreseeable future, is something else again. I find myself identifying a lot more with Herrick. Both his discontent, and his moments of satisfaction with the life he has, seem very familiar. (One of my students -- one prone to flashes of brilliance -- pointed out that To Live Merrily, and to Trust to Good Verses is all about being part of this awesome imagined community of poets, the community that he can't have in real life, not in Devonshire anyway.) I wonder if maybe he meant to marry and have children, only to find -- after he got there -- that it just wasn't going to happen, not here, not among these people. I wonder if Prudence Baldwin kept his bed warm for him. I wonder what drew him back after the Restoration, even though he seems to have planned, or at least wished, otherwise. (In this age of air travel, exile is seldom so permanent or the joy of return so profound, but I recognize the feeling: I have it, in miniature, every time I visit the big East Coast city that is home.) I wonder which is more real, the sense of exile or the interest in country customs and pleasures. I think Herrick and I would have had a lot to talk about if we met.
And I've been thinking about The Argument of His Book, the way the first four lines in particular are so much about the everyday stuff of a country parson's life, and how slowly, by degrees, his subject matter turns into a world of imagination and speculation, by turns frivolous and fanciful and profoundly serious. I suppose the stuff of all of our lives is like that. I do think the life and work I have here matters, and that is something.
Coming to these poems once more, after six years and odd months in Deep South Town, after tenure, knowing that I will have much the same sort of life for the foreseeable future, is something else again. I find myself identifying a lot more with Herrick. Both his discontent, and his moments of satisfaction with the life he has, seem very familiar. (One of my students -- one prone to flashes of brilliance -- pointed out that To Live Merrily, and to Trust to Good Verses is all about being part of this awesome imagined community of poets, the community that he can't have in real life, not in Devonshire anyway.) I wonder if maybe he meant to marry and have children, only to find -- after he got there -- that it just wasn't going to happen, not here, not among these people. I wonder if Prudence Baldwin kept his bed warm for him. I wonder what drew him back after the Restoration, even though he seems to have planned, or at least wished, otherwise. (In this age of air travel, exile is seldom so permanent or the joy of return so profound, but I recognize the feeling: I have it, in miniature, every time I visit the big East Coast city that is home.) I wonder which is more real, the sense of exile or the interest in country customs and pleasures. I think Herrick and I would have had a lot to talk about if we met.
And I've been thinking about The Argument of His Book, the way the first four lines in particular are so much about the everyday stuff of a country parson's life, and how slowly, by degrees, his subject matter turns into a world of imagination and speculation, by turns frivolous and fanciful and profoundly serious. I suppose the stuff of all of our lives is like that. I do think the life and work I have here matters, and that is something.
