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Class preparation for Intro to Lit continues, in fact has stepped up because the clock is winding down. I think I've got the novels covered (Main Street by Sinclaire Lewis and American Gods by Neil Gaiman), and I'm just about decided on doing Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw for the play. The list of short stories is coming together. This leaves only the poems.

Anyone who knows me well will know that the poetry is what makes this whole Intro to Lit thing so humorous. Try as I might, I cannot wrap my brain around pretty much all poetry. My attitude towards poetry in general is pretty bad, save for a handful of poems that I've either had to memorize or have chosen to memorize, and thus have grown to appreciate. IMO, poetry that doesn't rhyme isn't poetry. (For those of you who've read my poetry and have noticed that is almost never rhymes, I'd like to point out that, to me, one of the great mysteries of the universe is why it keeps winning awards.)

One of the aforementioned exceptions to my general loathing of poetry is Leave Youth His Roses by Christina Rosetti. It is an exception preciously because I lifted the title from a book of poetry for a story I was working on, then felt obligated to memorize the poem in its own right. This eventually led to me purchasing a book of Rosetti's poems, which I then left almost unread on my shelf after realizing that the first 15 or so poems sound just like Leave Youth His Roses.

Yesterday I opened up a library book of classic poetry from which I hoped to find pieces I could teach without contempt, and discovered that Rosetti had one included. So I read it. And liked it. Possibly I read it before. I've definitely heard it somewhere before.



When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tress:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet:
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.


As I'm planning to use it, I went on google to see what is out there, and found that I'm not the only one who has found a use for the piece. Scroll down to the one entitled Poem.

My emotions are all in a twist, but none of them--absolutely none--are sympathy for the woman. This probably makes me a bad person, but I can't help feeling that she's undermining her own case. Gah.