(Cute gift!). It was the ghost ship that didn’t carry us. “These fragments I have shored against my ruins”: The following line, when I first read it, startled me right off my seat, and led me to the incomparable Mary Oliver: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”. Poetry is so good at nailing an emotion in the span of a handful of words. All rights reserved. I don’t know whether I’m just weepy from exhaustion (rough night with little boy last night) or what, but two of these quotes actually brought tears to my eyes. And love the people in our lives But I went. set of paradigms to those of the Western world; they offer a glimpse Not sure if that’s even remotely close to what the author intended, but I ascribed that meaning to it when I was much younger and have carried it along throughout my life. It’s just been a process of figuring out which circumstance requires which toolkit. Home ; About ← Previous Post. Why breed lilacs at all? Eliot is showing us that the discursive fragments of art he has collected can be used to “shore up” against the ruinousness of life. When I struggle, I’m not alone. Since it is the nature of humility to measure itself by things nobler than itself, and of pride to compare itself only with the viler, humility is the ennobling, aspiring temper, and pride the abject and degrading. The last one (oh!!!) Learn more. Home; About; About. Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.”, –Mary Oliver, “Breakage” (more on this poem here), “She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.”. than all the sea which only Uuuuuuuugh, I said to myself, When was the last time we cared about something? In it, one will find a synthesis of Bakhtin’s ideologies surrounding texts, as well as a discussion of Kristeva’s intertextuality, and Derrida’s Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select. plain” of society has been long ago discarded. Menu Skip to content. “For the record, I think they [miracles] look nothing like a touchdown in the last seven seconds of the game or even missing a flight that then mistook the side of a mountain for a runway. Here are a few of my favorites. This is Turdus aonalaschkae pallasii, the hermit-thrush … I searched Google Books and then Google News . For you never know how much time is left Yes, totally — a bit bleak at first blush but I agree there’s something beautifully reassuring about it. and “A miracle is the first time you touch your child’s downy skin; it is every time you hear her laughter.” So sweet. The way other people feel. To be happy AND sad, and everything else. And the trees look at all of you the same, and say nothing. nay, whatever comes Share this: Twitter; Facebook; Like this: Like Loading... Leave a Reply Cancel reply. The king offers some consolation: “These fragments I have shored against my ruins,” he says, suggesting that it will be possible to continue on despite the failed redemption. These fragments I have shored against my ruins. Thanks for stirring it up and giving me another occasion to think…xxx. I didn’t want to go to choir. Globalisation for the Common Good Initiative, These fragments have I shored against my ruin. A super fun update on a classic terry robe, when I’m exhausted and bleary-eyed during his 3 a.m feed, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC12Pr2i_To, https://www.sfgate.com/books/article/Less-by-Andrew-Sean-Greer-11300207.php. Here are a couple that actually seem related, now that I pause to think about it. xx. Submissions for Issue 41 open 1 December 2020. The list I keep of these moments in the back of my journal is comprised less of times when I was laughing or smiling and more of times when I felt like I could feel the colors in my eyes deepening from the display before me. Living like that makes everyday life so high-stakes and removes the possibility that there is a certain pre-ordainment to the way things unfold. “These fragments I have shored against my ruins” ― T.S. I joined a choir. These Fragments I Have Shored Against My Ruins. Gourmet Gifts for Loved Ones (Or Yourself). Sometimes it’s better to keep moving, keep looking, keep exploring. Delight me. And how we spend our dash. “My goofiest-sounding secret is that I also believe in magic. Again. These fragments have I shored against my ruin (The unauthorized apologia) Skip to content. xx, I am SO glad to hear that. Eliot, to “fit you,” to create art in the face of madness. +Pippa Holt vibes for like 1/7th of the price. She told me last weekend that her coming to the US … Slideshare uses cookies to improve functionality and performance, and to provide you with relevant advertising. – e.e. Love that expression from the Gibran poem; been turning it over in my mind for awhile. The possibility of regeneration for the “arid “Intellectual vanity betrays men into an overweening confidence in the certainty of the deductions of reason, and a disregard for its proper limitations. Let man increase his knowledge—he has increased also that circumference of ignorance by which his knowledge is bounded. You are afraid; of being the last at a party without the others, but the others have gone on into a wood they do not understand. They’ll hold you together for a while, but how long until they fail? This article explores Mikhail M. Bakhtin’s (1981) theories as expressed in The Dialogic Imagination. Music matters. Firstly, the referential nature of the whole poem, the reference to April (and therefore spring) bringing plants back to life being a reference to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Beautiful, beautiful. In its opening lines, The Waste Land evokes a few important things. Back in 2016, I found myself at the beginning of a familiar pattern – I was cutting myself off from the world again. This is your very first post. Hieronymo's mad againe. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. Contact me about submissions and subscriptions: [email protected]. less never than alive Way more low-brow than all these other comments, which are wonderful and literary. Damyata. Thank you for sharing these. I was not the first to feel it, nor will I be the last. It is, if I remember 2nd year English well enough, a reflection on the fragmentary nature of the poem – all the references and what Eliot has made out of putting them together. P.S. How I reminded myself that effort feels good, that the payoff is worth it. Required fields are marked *. cummings ‘pity this busy monster, manunkind,’ (I have it framed in my son’s bathroom), “There is such a thing as a tesseract,” from, of course, ‘A Wrinkle in Time,’ and the first sentence of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. SparkNotes is brought to you by Barnes & Noble. higher than soul can hope or mind can hide) And the point is, to live everything. Eliot’s “The Wasteland,” a poem I recently rediscovered and keep circling back to during the pandemic. But over the past year I have come to see that different circumstances require different levels of proactivity. For it matters not, how much we own, Perhaps it’s obvious that I struggled with indecision a lot in my college years/20’s! Seeing them realise their characters and surprise me. I think about it constantly. I’m not sure why it speaks to me so much or pops into my head at random times but I take it as a sign to not worry so much about the corporate rat race and material definitions of success. the failed redemption. Most speculative errors may be traced to an unwillingness to acquiesce in inscrutable mystery as one of their sources. I spent a lot of time with T.S. I had no one to help me, but the T. S. Eliot helped me.