Rumi to Zukofsky to Chaucer to Sexton.

Dr. Johnson asked, "What qualities do you note as you move from Rumi to Zukofsky to Chaucer to, whomever: Anne Sexton"?  Well, I finished The Essential Rumi a week ago.  Reading Rumi I enter a head space where I see him as having accessed higher levels of perception than I have.  In the back of my head while reading him I think about the possibility of gaining access to this initiated tradition.

I finished Zukofsky's A Test of Poetry last weekend.  Reading him I enter my poet/student of poetry mode.  I feel guilty about my lack of knowledge of languages, and I map I my future reading along a Zukofskian (almost Poundian) program.  Whereas with Rumi I feel like an outsider looking in to the Sufi tradition, with Zukofsky I feel like an outsider looking in to the Western poetic tradition.  With Rumi I don't see a way in without personal contact with part of that initiated tradition.  WIth Zukofsky I see a way in with study of languages and other poets (Ovid, Catullus, Virgil, Shakespeare, Stevens, etc.).

I read two pages of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde this morning.  I found it slow going with my limited knowledge of Middle English.  I enjoyed it mildly, but when I walked outside and looked at the sky and the birds I noticed a definite change and enlargement of consciousness.  Driving to work I found myself thinking about Dennis Moran, my Chaucer professor at Arizona State back in the 1980's.  He used to stop in the bookstore where I worked after graduation, and he would help me with my Middle English pronunciation.

I notice I've commented more on the qualities I notice in my mind than the qualities I notice in the poetry.

My Chaucer book has two columns of text to the page, so it takes me a while to finish two more pages.  I feel little desire to read any more Chaucer at present.  Reading Zukofsky I feel gung ho to focus on reading him and texts he recommends for weeks, months, years.

I read a bit of Anne Sexton a few days ago.  Some people see a decline in her late poems.  I tend to read them thinking of her coming suicide and looking for changes in her mental health.  I find myself a little scared to finish her Collected Poems.