Discoveries

One of the perks of having an interest in what you might broadly term music and the arts is the frequency with which you encounter the sense of discovering something fresh and exciting - whether it's a single work or, best of all, a composer or writer who offers a new world of works just waiting for you to rampage through. To this day I remember exactly how it felt (I'm talking of something entirely visceral here) to read Tolkien's preface to The Lord of the Rings and know just how much sheer pleasure lay in waiting in the pages following.

I was set to thinking about this today when I came across two versions of Donald Hall's poem Her Long Illness tucked away in one of my files. These were thoughtfully provided for me by my student Victor when I supervised him for his Extended Essay on precisely this text (or, rather, texts - which in a sense was the point of the essay) a couple or so years back. From the moment Victor described the poem, which I'd never heard of before - indeed, I was barely aware of Hall's output - I knew, without quite knowing how I knew with such certainty, that I was going to enjoy it. And when I actually read it, it sort of exploded into my consciousness. Indeed, simply reading the opening lines today set me all a tremble: Daybreak until nightfall, / he sat by his wife at the hospital / while chemotherapy dripped / through the catheter into her heart.

Remarkably Victor's EE did the poem some justice. (I say 'remarkably' since the poem is so powerful it just goes beyond any kind of analysis.) Supervising the EE was probably amongst the easiest jobs I've ever had, and definitely amongst the most simply pleasurable. And I'd strongly encourage all poetry lovers out there to get hold of both Hall's versions of the poem, and a box of tissues just in case.

But what I'm leading up to is the fact that a rather tasty edition of some of Hall's earlier poems now sits beckoning on my shelves, and my ending up a fan is massively odds on. And if you feel envious, I'm sorry, but I intend you to. Ha!