A poet who doesn't know it

At the best of times, I am a compulsive purchaser of books.  My bookcase is full of books I have bought - both new and following hours of browsing in second-hand shops - and never read.  There are the books I feel I "should" read (e.g. The Female Eunuch and The Second Sex), the ones I am genuinely interested in but lost concentration before getting more than 5 pages in (e.g. books on Greek and Roman mythology), and the ones I've started but never finished because they are a bit too long and daunting for my current lifestyle (e.g. Anna Karenina).

Being in Bangladesh has done nothing for my book-buying addiction - especially when an "expensive" book costs 500tk, or around $8.  I have bought one of Muhammad Yunus' books, a collection of essays in criticism of Yunus' work, two collections of short stories by Bangladeshi writers and most recently, 3 books of poetry by Rabindranath Tagore.  Tagore is to Bangladesh what Henry Lawson or Banjo Paterson are to Australia.  He won a Nobel prize for Literature (in 1913) and almost every house, office, school, shop etc has a picture of him on the wall.

I have always thought people who chose to read poetry for their own pleasure - particularly whole books of the stuff - quite wanky.  I can admit to enjoying the odd short poem in the "Good Weekend" section of The Age on Saturdays, but would never go out of my way to actively seek more opportunities to read poetry.  The most extreme example of poetry pretentiousness I can remember is sitting next to some guy before the screening of a film at the French Film Festival in Melbourne, reading a book of Rimbaud's writings - in French.  Prick.

English was one of my strong subjects at school.  I loved reading and then writing about the books my class studied (albeit a regurgitated version of my teacher's interpretation of the texts in question).  But poetry was my Achilles' heel.  The day before my Year 12 English exam, I fronted up to my teacher's office in tears because I was petrified there would be a compulsory question about the poems we had studied.  Slight over-reaction?  Yes - but at 18 years of age when everyone is telling you that your Year 12 results will determine your future happiness, it's easy to lose perspective on things.

So, with this little bit of background information, guess which are the books that I have devoured?  Yes - the bloody poetry.

Listen to this (well, read it anyway):

While following the path all alone,

I see that my lamp has gone out.

The storm has come,

and now I have the storm as my companion.

(...)

Now which way must I go

in this inky darkness?

Perhaps this thunder-clap

will give me news of a fresh path.

I can't get enough!  On my first visit to Cox's Bazar, the beachside holiday and honeymoon capital of Bangladesh, I spent my free morning in bed reading Tagore.  I can't work out why I love it so much...  Maybe cos he mentions flutes a lot?  E.g.:

The pain-flute plays

in the winds.

I suspect Tagore will become my new Mean Girls, with a quote for every occasion.  Maybe not quite as funny, but likely to be equally profound.  Having said that, I'll still get a bit of mileage out of "I want my pink shirt back!" and "Boo, you whore."

And this doesn't mean I'll say "fuck" any less frequently.