Tintern Abbey

Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a sweet inland murmur.*—Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
Which on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view

These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which, at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Among the woods and copses lose themselves,
Nor, with their green and simple hue, disturb
The wild green landscape. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreathes of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees,
With some uncertain notice, as might seem,

Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some hermit's cave, where by his fire
The hermit sits alone.

The first 25 lines of the poem are my favorite. Wordsworth takes his readers back to a place where the only thing he knows about is in his memory. this semester i am also taking my brit lit II class and we have read wordsworth... and though i like his work tintern abbey is by far my favortie thing that i read of him. i find it quite ironic that this semester is the first time that i read wordsworth in any of my classes and its not only in my capstone but also in my last lower division class that i have to take.... hmm.. is the world trying to tell me something... am i to have some epiphany while reading tintern abbey? well i havent had one yet but i do reall enjoy reading through it. i think what i like the most about this poem... is that wen reading through it i am moved by his words and not because i think they are amazing per say... but because when picturing what he is writing is beautiful.... i have a place in my head that i have been before that always comes to mind when i am reading this.

the place that i love and the place that might not actually look like what wordsworth is viewing but i picture my families ranch.... the land is outside of red lodge montana... and there is a beautful stream with green hills that go on forever, and trees that line the end of the land like a fence that was put up , but in fact they have always been there.... not that it is the same in calibur as tintern abbey, because i looked up pictures of what land and area wordworth was looking at but for a poem to move me enough to take me to a place where i love and can imagine it very clearly is pretty amazing to me .

Annie Dillard

“Because how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

Annie Dillards essay on the eclipse was ... well wonderful..... i got taken away by her words and really felt that i was in that moment with her. all of her different moments of strong detail in her writing made me wish that i could write like her! i loved the moment when she wrote, "I turned back to the sun. it was going. the sun was going, and the world was wrong. the grasses were wrong; they were platinum. their detail of stem, head, and blade shone lightness and artificaially distinct as an art photographers platinum print.' i cant explain why but i stopped at that moment and just re read those sentences over and over again. there was something sad about what she is saying but at the same time she is captivating the beauty in the moment. by looking at everything around her with such complex, yet simple eyes....

Hopkins and inscape

“All Life death does end and each day dies with sleep”

“Nothing is so beautiful as spring -- when weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush; Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring the ear, it strikes like lightning to hear him sing.”

i was surprised to find that when i typed in Hopkins and inscape there is a whole website that related to it. for some reason i thought this was going to take longer and i wasnt gong to be able to find what sexson had wanted us to! but on the website it states ' By "inscape" he means the unified complex of characteristics that give each thing its uniqueness and that differentiate it from other things'

i feel that hopkins has it right.... characteristics are extremly complex but the uniqueness in the complexities is where there is something new to learn and something new to see. i think back to all the people that i have been honored to meet through the years here at msu and i realize yet again that the only people that i have every really been able to connect to on a certain level are English majors..... and i dont think it is that we are all the same i think that there are so many people that are in the program.... in our class! that are all so complex and so different. it is exciting to talk to people like that rather than ones that have nothing interresting to say or nothing that moves me...

Walter Pater

A very intimate sense of the expressiveness of outward things, which ponders, listens, penetrates, where the earlier, less developed consciousness passed lightly by, is an important element in the general temper of our modern poetry.

All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.

Art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass

In a sense it might even be said that our failure is to form habits: for, after all, habit is relative to a stereotyped world, and meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes two persons, things, situations, seem alike.

Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end.

What is important, then, is not that the critic should possess a correct abstract definition of beauty for the intellect, but a certain kind of temperament, the power of being deeply moved by the presence of beautiful objects.

I couldnt help but put the quotes up from walter pater that i just really enjoyed. i love that this whole semester we have been able to read poets of al types and poets at first seem to all be the same to an extent.... but for the first time i have let poets move me and really make me think and explore thoughts.walter pater is one that has surprised me in the sense that what he has said connects to me in an odd way..... not as much as TS eliot, but there is something there that i really love. i think it may be the sense of complete a utter importance he stresses on beauty and art. for him it seems to be very important to open ones eyes and really pay attention to what is around you.

Diamonds

while going over all the Diamonds in class today i realized that for the most part, Gabrial is like everyone else in the world. we all look past things, we hardly ever pay attention to the small details, in life. if we did we would surely go crazy, but sometimes i wish that maybe i just paid attention a little more than i do. when paying attention to the small things, looking at all the coincidenses that life seems to be, i realize that all those little things, all those mute moments, all those times coicidnental happenings.... they all add up to that big 'AHHHH' so why would i want to pay attention to the little things so very carefully?? if i did wouldnt that ruin that great moment of epiphany? wouldnt it just make life that more dull? i think so...
it seemed that the most common diamond is the painting. the balcony. gabrial. his wife. i feel that the way joyce expects all his readers to read is how he thinks we should read life as well. it seems that the characters in 'The Dead' are all dead to an extent.... they live their lives with not much change in daily ruitine..... and if we didnt pay attention to the small things that Gabrial doesnt pay attention to at all, we wouldnt get that from the text.