SPRING BREAK Journal: March 16, 2006

I’ve been enjoying “books on tape” during this vacation – mainly a selection of poems from the Romantic Period and Jane Eyre. Yesterday I listened for a long time to some poems by Wordsworth – his long “Intimations Ode”, and several shorter lyrics. I didn’t have the texts in front of me, which was just as well, for it forced me to listen with the greatest care. I’ve read the Ode several times over the years, but this time so many previously concealed meanings became clear to me. It’s obviously a poem of depth and beauty, and also of great spirituality. As I listened while sitting on a bench in the park, I realized that Wordsworth was talking about the same spiritual truths I’ve been pondering for years. It’s funny – I thought he was my favorite poet, but I realized yesterday that I didn’t really know his poems very well at all. Later, I sat in the comfortable rocking chair in my apartment and listened to (and read) some of Jane Eyre. It’s slower going than just reading silently, but I’m finding it to be a more pleasurable and more insightful kind of reading. I seem to be going through the inside of the story instead of just drifting across the surface of it, as I do with much of my reading. The rest of my vacation looms as a continuing pleasant experience with reading great literature – both following the print with my eyes and listening to accomplished readers speaking the famous words.