Jeopardy and hazard

In my two lit classes this semester, I'm doing ... not quite full-on-game-based-learning, but something close to it, with a few competitive role-playing activities, some theater-games-type performance stuff, and, in the case of the Brit Lit survey, a few days set aside for playing actual historical games, and thinking about what they reveal about the cultures that played them. (Plus, we'll be reading a lot of texts that are essentially gamey -- from Anglo-Saxon riddles to the storytelling contest in The Canterbury Tales to George Herbert doing fun, playful things with words.)

It's fun and creative and energizing, and I need that after ten years of teaching these classes -- but it's also deeply scary. I'm starting to understand, on a gut level, how apt it is that our modern English words jeopardy and hazard come from medieval gaming terms. (And Jeopardy!, of course, is a game today as well!) You can't always control how a game will go, even if you're theoretically the one in charge of the game. Just ask Chaucer's Host. The stakes are sometimes different from what you thought they would be; ask Gawain.

I'm hoping that this will all coalesce the way I'm envisioning, on a thematic level -- that we'll have enough time to talk about the physical and moral hazards of play (sometimes the Baron steals your hair; sometimes you're so busy dicing in the tavern that Death catches you unaware), as well as the ways it can work as a proxy for bigger cultural issues and culture wars (Herrick's holiday-games are particularly good for this). I'm not totally sure I will manage to pull this off, because I have a tendency to get distracted while teaching, caught up in the moment like Chaucer's squabbling pilgrims, and often never do reach the bigger points I intended to make; I feel like I lack an inner Parson to illuminate our pilgrimage's larger meaning.

In the meantime, we had a nice lively round of jeux-partis today, which meant everyone at least got used to talking in front of the class and defending a position; and we will be trying our hand at hazard in a few weeks (with handmade replica medieval dice, which are one of the many awesome things you can buy at Kalamazoo).

Herrick, again

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.

Discontents in Deep South Town

More discontents I never had
Since I was born, than here;
Where I have been, and still am sad,
In this dull Devonshire;
Yet justly too I must confess,
I ne'er invented such
Ennobled numbers for the press
Than where I loathed so much.
-- Robert Herrick

Am back home for the rest of the summer. I am trying out Herrick's formula for literary productivity. I'm not sure it's working.

I don't actually loathe it here -- at least, not yet -- but it is hazy and hot and sleepy, and there are too many strip malls and check-cashing places, and the most happening place in town is the Super WalMart, and the thought of staying here for the next thirty-odd years fills me with a vague sense of dread. I had an idea that this would force me to start revising the dissertation out of sheer boredom, or failing that, to start revising the novel I began a while ago and haven't touched for the last six months. But right at the moment, I can't bring myself to open either file.

Would it be phenomenally stupid for me to retype my entire dissertation, making whatever changes I see fit along the way? On the plus side, this would force me to pay attention to every word, and I would end up with a brand-new M*cros*ft W*rd version, which seems to be what publishers want, rather than an ancient and quirky WordPerfect file which always ends up with screwed-up formatting when I try to convert it. On the other hand, this sounds like it could be a colossal waste of time, and would also require me to actually install W*rd on my home computer, where I don't particularly want it. (Typing it up at the office is not an option, as I cannot have beer at the office. One must observe the decencies.)

Herrick, I'm fairly sure, never faced such a dilemma; but then, Herrick waited until after he had lost his day job to start sending his ennobled numbers for the press, which is a luxury I can't afford.

I think I will go swimming, or maybe pick some blackberries.

Summer reading: The Complete Poetry of Robert Herrick

So, a while back I saw a CFP for a conference about [major theme of my dissertation] in the works of Robert Herrick. OK, I thought. I like Herrick. I've never written anything about Herrick, but I'm sure I could. Maybe I'll just get the complete works out of the library and see what grabs me.

1,402 poems later, I have reached two conclusions: 1) Herrick wrote a heck of a lot more poems about farting and body odor than I'd ever realized (neither of these is the subject of my dissertation); 2) I don't, actually, know what I would say if I were going to write an essay about Herrick. With a few obvious exceptions such as "Corinna" and "The Hock-Cart," which I expect everyone will write about, he just doesn't seem to lend himself to analysis -- at least, not for me. But he is a delight.

So, a random selection of lesser-known Herrick, without commentary.

Upon Pink an ill-fac'd Painter. Epigram.

To paint the Fiend, Pink would the Devill see;
And so he may, if he'll be rul'd by me:
Let but Pink's face i'th'Looking-glasse be showne,
And Pink may paint the Devill's by his owne.

The parting verse, the feast there ended

Loth to depart, but yet at last, each one
Back must now go to's habitation:
Not knowing thus much, when we once do sever,
Whether or no, that we shall meet here ever.
And for my self, since time a thousand cares
And griefs hath fil'de upon my silver hairs;
'Tis to be doubted whether I next yeer,
Or no, shall give ye a re-meeting here.
If die I must, then my last vow shall be,
You'l with a tear or two, remember me,
Your sometime Poet; but if fates do give
Me longer date, and more fresh springs to live:
Oft as your field, shall her old age renew,
Herrick shall make the meddow-verse for you.

Poets

Wantons we are; and though our words be such,
Our Lives do differ from our Lines by much.

Ceremony Upon Candlemas Eve

Down with the Rosemary, and so
Down with the Baies, & misletoe:
Down with the Holly, Ivie, all,
Wherewith ye drest the Christmas Hall:
That so the superstitious find
Not one least Branch there left behind:
For look how many leaves there be
Neglected there (maids trust to me)
So many Goblins you shall see.

The Bell-man

Along the dark, and silent night,
With my Lantern, and my Light,
And the tinkling of my Bell,
Thus I walk, and this I tell:
Death and dreadfullnesse call on,
To the gen'rall Session;
To whose dismal Barre, we there
All accompts must come to cleeere:
Scores of sins w'ave made her many,
Wip't out few, (God knowes) if any.
Rise ye Debters then, and fall
To make paiement, while I call.
Ponder this, when I am gone;
By the clock 'tis almost One.

According to one of my instructors in undergrad, who was a fountain of seventeenth-century gossip, Herrick kept a pet pig that drank beer. This has nothing to do with anything, but it makes me happy.