November 16, 2022: Back to School -

But at my back I always hear

Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near....

                                                            - Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress

Our boy Andrew is saying that Life is short. Make the most of it. Gather ye rosebuds (same poem)! We'll all be dead soon. Also, urging his coy mistress, he’s saying: Let’s get it on right now, shall we?

It’s a great poem. At one point, he says that if they only had forever, he would be more patient. If time weren’t a-wasting…

My vegetable love should grow

Vaster than empires and more slow.

His vegetable love! He’s so good.

I share with Andrew the sense that life is fleeting (though he could learn a thing or two about consent).  I too hear that chariot at my back. I tend to say, “I’ll be dead soon!” with a smile and a shrug, to justify doing one more thing, or having one more adventure. To me, “I’ll be dead soon!” is much the same as “Life is short.”

Other people think “I’ll be dead soon!” is a bit much.  

Poetry interlude: The second line above - Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near - has an accent mark above the second syllable of “wingèd ,” telling you to pronounce both syllables – wing-ed, not winged. And when you do, you get this waltz rhythm: ONE and a TWO and a THREE and a FOUR.

Those first three feet (trust me) are called “dactyls.”  I learned this as an undergrad, by memorizing a strange little Samuel Taylor Coleridge rhyme, accurately titled “Metrical Feet.” 

End of poetry interlude.

SO. In my NEW Comeback Tour, I spent the New Jersey and New York bits with friends and family. I spent the middle bit, New Haven, with strangers and acquaintances, and used my ample free time to explore. One morning, I had two hours free, so I went into the English Department, and said, “What’s a great lecture I can attend between now and noon?” They sent me to Modern Poetry since 1950. Cool.

I asked the prof if I could sit in the back, and he said sure. The lights went down, the first slide came up: Derek Walcott.

Oh, for Pete’s sake. I choose the class at random, there are so many poets since 1950, really Derek Walcott? Seriously?

He’s a Nobel Laureate. He’s a fine poet. I have a grudge against him, though – he chased my friend around his office when she and I were students. Grrr. It’s as if you had decided to attend a random lecture at the Law School, and you had once been roommates with Anita Hill, and up came a slide saying The Jurisprudence of Clarence Thomas.  Grrr.

It was a good lecture. But late in the game, the professor was talking about how Walcott had used dactyls (remember dactyls?) in one poem to show his opposition to dead white English colonial poets who were writing in iambic pentameter, because dactyls are the opposite of iambs.

They are not.

I’m sorry, but I have decluttered vast amounts of knowledge from my storehouse, and there are only about three things left in there, one of which is that Coleridge poem. The opposite of an iamb is a trochee, and the opposite of a dactyl is an anapest. I am quibbling, here, about the meaning of “opposite.” I am picking a minuscule nit. I don’t care. The nit is mine own, and I was grumpy about Derek Walcott, and I was having a #HerToo moment on behalf of my friend.

So I sent her a text (from my phone, as I was sitting in the back of the lecture hall, isn’t modern technology fun).  And I sent the professor an email: Two things – 1) Walcott the lecher and 2) Dactyls are not the opposite of iambs.

My friend wrote back, which was a hoot. And about an hour later, the professor wrote back, beginning with “OMG.”  We had a fine exchange, and I give him full marks for taking my note with good humor. He ended up with, “I do this for a living….” I felt oddly vindicated.

On the final day, the Oregon delegation was standing in the rotunda, discussing what, if anything, people were going to do with the rest of the evening. I said I was going to a Glee Club concert, and someone observed that I’d been packing my schedule to the max. I did my big shrug and said, “I’ll be dead soon!”

A little silence fell, and I said, “We all will!”

To which one of my co-delegates replied, “WHICH flight home are you on?”