{"id":1814,"date":"2008-09-26T11:06:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-26T11:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=1814"},"modified":"2018-11-20T05:29:55","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T05:29:55","slug":"poetry-friday-friends-in-roo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=1814","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Friday: Friends in the Room"},"content":{"rendered":"

A friend I met my junior year in college gave me a few lines of verse by an author I hadn’t heard of — it was something to do with grain and chaff and it was a little sentimental for me. I chuckled about it, not at all being a sentimental person [*rolls eyes*], and studying too much 19th century literature to take it too seriously at the time. I tucked the quote away in a journal, and read it periodically, liking the words, but still not quite understanding.<\/p>\n

Years later, I dig out the verse with the comprehension that was missing. This poem is actually not a poem at all, though it was included in the 1936 version of Best Loved Poems of the American People<\/i> under the title “Friendship.” It is really an exclamation from a character in an 1859 novel called A Life for a Life<\/i> by the English writer Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, who was born in 1826. From the Wikipedia entry:<\/p>\n

A Life for a Life (1859)<\/p>\n

Thus ended our little talk: yet it left a pleasant impression. True, the subject was strange enough; my sisters might have been shocked at it; and at my freedom in asking and giving opinions. But oh! the blessing it is to have a friend to whom one can speak fearlessly on any subject; with whom one’s deepest as well as one’s most foolish thoughts come out simply and safely. Oh, the comfort \u2014 the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person \u2014 having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.
Somebody must have done a good deal of the winnowing business this afternoon; for in the course of it I gave him as much nonsense as any reasonable man could stand … <\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/i><\/p>\n

I posted this piece for one of my very early Poetry Fridays, and this slightly revised version seems a fitting retread for today.<\/p>\n


<\/a>Imagine a world where the breath was used for that kindness of blowing the unintended nonsense away…<\/p>\n

Poetry Friday is hosted by the inestimable Miss Rumphius<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A friend I met my junior year in college gave me a few lines of verse by an author I hadn’t heard of —…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[93,10],"class_list":["post-1814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-poetry-friday","tag-views"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1814"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5178,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1814\/revisions\/5178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}