« Hang On Outlet | Home | Fin Phone — 'Warning: May attract a lot of attention' »
February 4, 2009
Learning To Read — by Franz Wright
If I had to look up every fifth or sixth word,
so what. I looked them up.
I had nowhere important to be.
My father was unavailable, and my mother
looked like she was about to break,
and not into blossom, every time I spoke.
My favorite was the Iliad. True,
I had trouble pronouncing the names,
but when was I going to pronounce them, and
to whom?
My stepfather maybe?
Number one, he could barely speak English;
two, he had sufficient intent
to smirk or knock me down
without any prompting from me.
Loneliness, boredom and terror
my motivation
fiercely fuelled.
I get down on my knees and thank God for them.
Du Fu, the Psalms, Whitman, Rilke.
Life has taught me
to understand books.
February 4, 2009 at 10:01 AM | Permalink
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341c5dea53ef010536d733fd970b
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Learning To Read — by Franz Wright:
Comments
I'd be lying if I didn't say that I had a simply glorious childhood. All the love and care I could want, all the parental involvement in my upbringing that any child could long for. I was fast on my way to becoming a couch potato however until, my parents substituted our television viewing for reading time. As a result, today I am prone to flights of fancy and of looking at things with the dual lens of imagination and possibility. Books take special credit for my being this way. In my opinion, there are fewer true as gold pairings than that which puts together a person and a book.
Posted by: Bookworm Miles | Feb 5, 2009 2:51:37 PM
Excellent.
I wasn't knocked around or ignored, and my parents were available (as available as they could be), but I was just born with a little seed of melancholy that grew into a great big tree, and if it hadn't been for Sherlock, Twain, Bradbury, James (M.R.), Lovecraft, Shakespeare, Salinger, Swift, Pauline Kael, Poe, E.B. White, (plus Charlie Parker and Louis Armstrong) when I was a kid, I don't know what would've happened.
Posted by: Flautist | Feb 5, 2009 1:08:58 PM
What a vivid word-picture of his very unhappy childhood. How sad! But at least he found something to be thankful about in it.
Posted by: Lilorfnannie | Feb 4, 2009 12:11:59 PM
The comments to this entry are closed.