Into the strenuous briefness...

And so this blog is born. 

It is the initiative of a graduate seminar course where we are called on to offer a public vision of our intellectual lives, particularly as we cultivate our feminist scholarship.  The hope is that we can build an academic classroom community through digital participatory learning.  Although reflections on this readings are soon to come, for now I wanted to offer a public 'hello.'

I take the title from an e. e. cummings poem shared with me several years ago by a dear friend.  She once filled a box of drawings, phrases, quotes from books and our long emails to each other, cutouts of pretty pictures, and so many beautiful poems, including "into the strenuous briefness" by cummings.  She titled the box itself "the box of love, love, and joy," and she gave to me one Valentine's Day with the idea, I think, that there are infinite varieties of deep and meaningful relationships that should be honored, not just on one commercial day a year, but every day.  The box is with me still, even though I am far from her, and I can read through it and feel the warmth radiate from the scraps of paper.


into the strenuous briefness
by e. e. cummings

into the strenuous briefness
Life:
handorgans and April
darkness, friends

i charge laughing.
Into the hair-thin tints
of yellow dawn,
into the women-coloured twilight

i smilingly glide. I
into the big vermilion departure
swim, sayingly;

(Do you think?) the
i do, world
is probably made
of roses & hello:

(of solongs and, ashes)



This poem is one that leaves you with a feeling of profoundness and poignancy and whimsical, airy possibility.  He captures those moments where we stand, surveying where we are and what we have, and feel so light and yet so weighty with the fullness of it all.  Cummings calls on the coexisting brilliant and ephemeral qualities of life, the way we both begin and end with each breath. 

I have heard of no better description of life than the strenuous briefness - it is short, it is hard, it is breathtaking, it is heart wrenching, it is wonderful.

And the question remains - between the roses and the ashes, what will we do with the little time we have?