Notes From the Heart

I don't "do" much poetry but I have a special place in my heart for the Bronte sisters who I view as a single literary corporation. Long segments of their prose are almost wild unrestrained poetry; I think of "Jane Eyre", "Villette", "Wuthering Heights", "Agnes Grey", etc. even parts of Charlotte's letters. So doing Bronte poetry is not really the same as doing poetry: my guy-think, don't you know. Also, the Brontes even at their most fanciful, stuck pretty close to what they knew. One could, without much trouble, shuffle each of these poems into Elizabeth Gaskell's "The Life of Charlotte Bronte". Jan Hartley did an absolute fabulous narration. I don't know where she hails from but her voice carries a sense of the inner-music, determination, isolation and hard knocks one imagines was the life of the Brontes. I have only one quibble, the word "Unabridged". Frankly, I don't see why all of the three sister's poems were not included; one more hour would have finished the job. Just a suggestion; I got more than my money's worth. One of my creative writing professors, William "Kit" Hathaway called his sections "poultry" classes. He along with the likes of Warren Eyster and Simone Di Piero did their level best to pound some "poultry" and a bit of literature into my thick head, without much success. The English Department probably breathed a long sigh of relief when I graduated. My professors would have been shocked if they knew much more than the requirements I read but I wound up with an abiding affection for prose from about 1600 to about 1950. Poetry, not so much but I have given it a heroic try. Yet, even poetry has rubbed off on me a bit because I tend to prefer "poetic" prose such as the Bronte sisters' or Thomas Hardy's writings while, for instance, Hemingway and many modern writers leave me where they found me. I would read the Bronte's laundry list.

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