A Bit About Poetry
Every so often I try to alternate posts of fiction with nonfictional topics, as a way of providing some variety in the usual routine. I have ideas for more stories, a whole boatload of ideas: for one thing, with the help of a friend, my mutant space otter character in The Diamond Job finally has a name. He’ll have a story soon, too.
Sadly, however, the prompt I usually rely on in this week is written in the first person, and my space otter, Oswald Stamper, formerly of the Space Otter Corps, doesn’t strike me as a first-person character. This is probably because I am not much of a first-person writer. Third person omniscient works well with my preferred style of writing: it allows one to be so much more snarky. In any event, there it is. I could attempt to challenge myself and try a first-person story; if an idea strikes me between now and Thursday, I will bang it out and send it off to the newly moderated speakeasy grid.
In the meantime, I thought I would share an interesting coincidence. This past summer, I sat for the bar exam of my state. It’s a two-day affair which redefines the word stressful, even when there isn’t a rock concert practicing next door to the facility where you are taking the exam, and even when your essay-question software hasn’t glitched for three or four hours. On the second day, after it was all over, I went back to my hotel room and watched the series finale of Frasier. In that very well done episode, the titular character quoted a certain poem by Tennyson. I found it to be singularly appropriate. Then, a week or two ago, while I was waiting for results (spoiler: I passed, I’m a lawyer, woot woot), I finally got around to watching the phenomenal James Bond movie Skyfall. In that movie, Judi Dench, playing the role of M, quoted the very same poem.
I don’t really believe in coincidences. In any event, here is the relevant excerpt from the poem. I hope you are as moved by it as I was.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
