Brevity

I have ideas fleeting in and out of my head, but when it comes to putting it down in writing, I lose all interest and decide to look up random videos on YouTube. There; that explains why nothing has been posted here in a while (of course, this is assuming that someone has been wondering why. To my knowledge, there are only two such individuals.)

Anyway, a couple of days ago, I realised that I finally ‘got’ Wordsworth’s Daffodils. We did it in my sixth grade English class, complete with a page and a half worth of interpretation. This involved what had inspired the poet, his background, his family, what the author of the textbook thought the poet meant by each and every word in the poem, etc. If anyone had asked for my honest opinion regarding what I thought had inspired the poet, I would have replied, ‘Maybe he just liked daffodils.’ But of course, no one was looking for an honest opinion, least of all mine. So I dutifully replicated the textbook author’s thoughts and words and managed to get a fairly decent grade as well.

Now, thirteen years later and in England, I've seen the daffodils. Without a page and a half explaining why, what, where, and how, I feel the poem. Which makes me wish that every poet/author/composer/artist would add to their work a short paragraph or even a few sentences explaining what inspired them and what the poem ‘actually means.’ This would immediately eliminate all this presumptuousness on the part of textbook authors, and future generations of students will be infinitely happier. I may go even so far as to say a little original thought may emerge from not having to constantly reproduce someone else’s ideas. Case in point, Wordsworth on Daffodils could have been as follows; Good piece of work, quite proud of the rhyming. Enjoy it as just that. For those who want a deeper understanding, go look at a field of daffodils. Else, leave well enough alone.

Now all that's needed is for the millions of other poets/authors/composers/artists to follow suit. Easy as that.