Explaining the poem

Last night, I dreamed of a girl named Claire. I've blogged about her in the past -- we were friends when I was 17 or 18, and we had a shared love of poetry. It was her who first read me the poem The Lion for Real. I think perhaps she liked the sound of her own voice a little bit too much, but she so loved to read poetry out loud. I remember one night, the two of us alone in her bedroom, with a bottle of wine and reading poetry. Thinking back, a lot of the poetry she read me was her own writing -- which now seems slightly weird. Anyway. I was discussing in an email with a friend Allen Ginsberg's work, when I remembered the poem. Throughout my friendship with Claire, I had always wondered what the lion in the poem was supposed to symbolise -- and thought I'd appear stupid if I asked.

Much later, when Claire and I were no longer really friends any more, I told her I had always wondered but worried she'd think less of me for it. She was surprised. She had never given any thought to it, but at a guess would speculate maybe the lion was depression? This was a thought I'd had myself, but I didn't feel like it fitted properly -- why, if the lion was Ginsberg's depression, does he tell the lion "Terrible Presence! Eat me or die"? Claire supposed maybe he was saying to consume him entirely, or to leave him alone. Could be, but I still didn't feel it fitted. It would have been good enough for a literature essay if you could back it up with evidence, but it didn't sit right with me.

So while discussing Ginsberg I remembered the poem, and it being almost 10 years later, I know have access to everything in the world ever -- by way of the internet. Three brief searches discovered the meaning. The lion itself is not symbolic as such, but instead the poem is about Ginsberg's "visions".

Last night I dreamed that I met Claire in the street, randomly. She had the mini-speakers you get for a walkman, and it was set up on a wall next to her. I didn't ask what she was doing. Instead, I told her how I still loved the poem, and I could still hear her intonation when I read it. I told her how I had finally found out what the poem was about. She was confused, and didn't know why I would care.

Either way, it struck me recently that I blog about Musical Monday but never write about poems I love, and only very rarely books I have read, and rarer still films I have seen. I am going to try and do this more often -- and that's the story as to why yesterday was just a poem with no explanation, and what the poem means to me.