Reading Myself

Reading Myself
Robert Lowell

Like thousands, I took pride and more than just,
struck matches that brought my blood to a boil;
I memorized the tricks to set the river on fire--
Somehow never wrote something to go back to.
Can I suppose I am finished with wax flowers
And have earned my grass on the minor slopes of

Parnassus. . .

No honeycomb is built without a bee

adding circle to circle, cell to cell,

the wax and honey of a mausoleum--

this round dome proves its maker is alive;

the corpse of the insect lives embalmed in honey,

prays that its perishable work lives long

enough for the swee-toothed bear to desecrate--

this open book . . . my coffin.

I really enjoyed this poem because I struggle with pride and wanting to leave my mark on the world, and this poem really hits that subject hard for me. I like the way that the Lowell layed out the structure of this poem because it has a very unique flow to it. In the first line Lowell breaks up the sentence a comma and a semi-colon. The semi-colon allows us to see the relationship between the matches that set him on fire and the river of fire. I see his blood and the river as one thing; he took pride and was able to light a fire within himself, he learned a trick to light his blood on fire, to make it boil with drive and persistence. After he wrights this he then goes on to say that he never wrote anything to go back to, and in my head I just figured that he was saying he never really did anything substantial with the fire that he had within him, and he never was able to harness that vast amount of drive to accomplish much. Then he goes on to ask if he has earned his place on a grassy slope of Parnassus, which is a reference to his dealings with poetry, and he wonders if he has accomplished anything so great that he has earned a place with the gods with that work. The way that Lowell indented the "Parnassus" bit is really helpful; it allows the author to transition into the "second" stanza. In the "second" stanza Lowell talks about a bee and how it works and works and works to build this bee hive but in the end it will only get destroyed, but if the bee hive can just last to and be seen by the world or someone then it means that someone knew that the bee had to have existed to create that bee hive, and Lowell wants to create something like that, in fact, he already has his own bee hive. Lowell says, "this open book...my coffin." This means that Lowell considers his writing his bee hive, and the end of him, it is what he will leave to the world when he dies.