Between you and I, for Mohamed and I
very unique
graduated high school
not my forte (last word pronounced with two syllables, hence meaning 'loud')
No way:
Him (or her) and I
Personal peeve:
Educated people who think 'whom' and 'whomever' are always more elegant than 'who' and 'whoever' and thus are correct. Recent example: John Oliver (who did a fine job hosting "The Daily Show" in Jon Stewart's absence) pulling out a note that read "To whomever finds this." No. You can see his logic: 'to' is a preposition and needs an object. That would be fine if the sentence ended there, but it doesn't. John, who I'm sure is reading this, the verb 'finds,' like all verbs in English, needs a subject, and the subject is 'whoever.' The noun clause, "whoever finds this," is the object of the preposition 'to.'
In yesterday's mail, we received a set of three CDs, the Sounds of the Prairie, as a wedding gift from our friend Margy, a dedicated lover and defender of the Flint Hills and the Kansas prairie. I woke up early this morning, perhaps worrying about what I would say in today's blog. It was still dark and cool, as it's uncharacteristically been for a Kansas August these last few days. The birds are singing loudly and, I assume, happily, though Frost might have a different opinion about that. But the first sound I heard at 5:20 a.m., even though we live miles from a railroad track, was the sound of a distant train. I had already wondered whether there would be the sound of a train on Margy's CDs, as I had thought about Thoreau's chapter "Sounds" in Walden, which begins not with the expected sounds of nature, but also with the sound of a train. For those of us who live in 2013, the hooting of a train is nostalgic, a reminder of a slower, gentler time. But in the mid-nineteenth century, the attitude toward the train was much more ambivalent. It represented the intrusion of technology into and onto the prairie. The frontier was suddenly permeable. Even Thoreau couldn't escape the sound of the train.
Emily Dickinson has a famous poem, #383, about the intrusive nature of trains:
I like to see it lap the
Miles -
And lick the Valleys up
-
And stop to feed itself at
Tanks -
And then - prodigious
step
Around a Pile of Mountains
-
And supercilious peer
In Shanties - by the sides of
Roads -
And then a Quarry
pare
To fit it's sides
And crawl between
Complaining all the
while
In horrid - hooting stanza
-
Then chase itself down Hill
-
And neigh like Boanerges
-
Then - prompter than a
Star
Stop - docile and
omnipotent
At it's own stable door
-
Like so many Dickinson poems, there is an abrupt change of tone in the work (here, marked by the word 'supercilious'). The first stanza seems approving; rather than the train as iron horse, it's almost like a domesticated cat, lapping and licking. But soon the train is all-powerful, condescending, yet complaining. Its sounds are 'horrid' and 'hooting,' as if in derision. And the brilliant coupling of 'docile' and 'omnipotent' gives the poem its final kick.
I'll listen to Margy's CDs and appreciate the sounds of the prairie. I'll listen, too, for what sounds of civilization intrude.
No comments:
Post a Comment