"Deep in the Quiet Wood" of Life and Poetry

James Weldon Johnson, American Poet (1871-1938)

This month is a busy one. And I don't mean just "busy"; I mean crazy-busy, staying up until 3:00 AM nearly every night, working all weekend--that kind of busy. I adore teaching online literary analysis classes at Brave Writer, but the time and effort and brain invested in teaching a single work for a month to a group of 15 students who write six assignments a week...it's overwhelming and wonderful and amazing and exhausting. We're reading and discussing Daphne DuMaurier's Rebecca this month, and it's all of these...and more. ;)

I have wonderful notes on attending the 20th Annual Writer's Symposium by the Sea which featured an interview with Joyce Carol Oates, but they still need to be typed up before I can share them. I also attended a wonderful session with Doug Brunk who graduated from PLNU with me and another local writer on getting our work published; I have notes for that session to type up, too.

But today, with at least ten hours of work before me, I can only pop in to share a gorgeous poem that greeted me this morning in my inbox, courtesy of The Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day e-mails. Weekday offerings present us with the newest contemporary poems while weekend e-mails include classic poems.

At PLNU, I did a huge research paper on the Harlem Renaissance, and my heart has been with these extraordinary poets and writers since I turned 21. So to see a poem by one of the foremost poets of that age in my box was a lovely surprise, and reading the poem refreshed my tired soul.

Enjoy!!!

Deep in the Quiet Wood James Weldon Johnson

Are you bowed down in heart? Do you but hear the clashing discords and the din of life? Then come away, come to the peaceful wood, Here bathe your soul in silence. Listen! Now, From out the palpitating solitude Do you not catch, yet faint, elusive strains? They are above, around, within you, everywhere. Silently listen! Clear, and still more clear, they come. They bubble up in rippling notes, and swell in singing tones. Now let your soul run the whole gamut of the wondrous scale Until, responsive to the tonic chord, It touches the diapason of God’s grand cathedral organ, Filling earth for you with heavenly peace And holy harmonies. Isn't this poem amazing! I leave it with you, and encouragement to "catch, yet faint, elusive strains" of beauty this very day. With warm thoughts of "heavenly peace/ And holy harmonies,"