Edna O'Brien and "the Lonely Voice"

O'Brien interview

Note the way she leans into an uncomfortable theme--that of a middle-aged, divorced woman, displeased with her situation and life, and realizing it all against the backdrop of leaving her son at college.


The British Museum Reading Room

by Louis Macneice

Under the hive-like dome the stooping haunted readers
Go up and down the alleys, tap the cells of knowledge --
Honey and wax, the accumulation of years --
Some on commission, some for the love of learning,
Some because they have nothing better to do
Or because they hope these walls of books will deaden
The drumming of the demon in their ears.

Cranks, hacks, poverty-stricken scholars,
In pince-nez, period hats or romantic beards
And cherishing their hobby or their doom
Some are too much alive and some are asleep
Hanging like bats in a world of inverted values,
Folded up in themselves in a world which is safe and silent:
This is the British Museum Reading Room.

Out on the steps in the sun the pigeons are courting,
Puffing their ruffs and sweeping their tails or taking
A sun-bath at their ease
And under the totem poles -- the ancient terror --
Between the enormous fluted Ionic columns
There seeps from heavily jowled or hawk-like foreign faces
The guttural sorrow of the refugees.

In The British Museum 

by Thomas Hardy

'What do you see in that time-touched stone,
When nothing is there
But ashen blankness, although you give it
A rigid stare?

'You look not quite as if you saw,
But as if you heard,
Parting your lips, and treading softly
As mouse or bird.

'It is only the base of a pillar, they'll tell you,
That came to us
From a far old hill men used to name
Areopagus.'


- 'I know no art, and I only view
A stone from a wall,
But I am thinking that stone has echoed
The voice of Paul,

'Paul as he stood and preached beside it
Facing the crowd,
A small gaunt figure with wasted features,
Calling out loud

'Words that in all their intimate accents
Pattered upon
That marble front, and were far reflected,
And then were gone.

'I'm a labouring man, and know but little,
Or nothing at all;
But I can't help thinking that stone once echoed
The voice of Paul.'

"For the Imagists at the British Museum"

Y'all wore me down! Off to the British Museum we go. But there's a catch:

--your "exit ticket" out of the museum will be a poem or piece of flash fiction that leans into some sort of discomfort in a way that is honest and vivid, and should be inspired by your time at the British Museum.

--For Thursday, our last class day, please bring a notebook and pen, and a few ideas about your time here in London that might serve as fodder for a new brief piece.  If the weather holds, we'll be taking a walk through Regent's Park to Primrose Hill for a special outing. Bring snacks if you have them;)