~Small child sings theme song. The words are here.~
Introduction: Hello and welcome to PodLily, Volume 1, Episode 1: You are Like the Red, Red Rose
Weather Report:
It’s spring here in northern California. The rain’s coming down hard on the lemons that have just ripened on the bush outside our door. The magnolia tree is bursting with soft purple flowers, the neighbor’s tree down the street has put out its annual display of early February cherry blossoms and the air at night smells like jasmine.
Spring around here means Valentine’s Day, and Valentine’s Day means chocolate and poetry. The former must be procured by you from your favorite shop. But you can get the latter right here.
~Child sings a bit from the theme song to indicate that a transition is being made~
Poetry Report:
For as long as there have been poetry and lovers, there have been poems in which the loved one is compared to some extravagant precious thing. Lips like rubies, hair like spun gold, eyes like chocolate. That sort of thing. The most famous of all these poems is this one, because it goes beyond metaphor, to make a claim for the power of poetry to make the loved one immortal:
Sonnet 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall Death brag thou wand’rest in his shade
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Here, of course, the object of the speaker’s devotion is way, way better than a summer’s day. And then there’s all that stuff about how the poet makes the lover live forever by immortalizing the loved one.
What happens, though, if the poet’s a little uncertain about whether the loved one measures up to a really good day in July? After all — and let’s be honest here — the summer’s day metaphor doesn’t work for everybody. Anyway, what happens if the poet just happens to be the one who’s way better than a summer’s day? Billy Collins has something to say about that:
Litany, Billy Collins
You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine…
-Jacques Crickillon
You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.
However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.
It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general’s head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.
And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.
It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.
I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.
I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman’s tea cup.
But don’t worry, I’m not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and–somehow–the wine.
A Happy Valentine’s Day to each of you, my virtual valentines. This is PodLily signing off with hugs and kisses, until the next time she can figure out how to get her microphone to work.
~Child sings some more of the theme song, to indicate that things have come to an end~
