Read By: Paisley Rekdal
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Paisley Rekdal on her selection:
Charming may not be a word commonly associated with Alexander Pope, but for me, \\u201cEpistle to Miss Blount, On Her Leaving the Town, After the Coronation\\u201d may be one of the most charming poems I know. Pope, famous for \\u201cThe Rape of the Lock,\\u201d and his exhaustingly didactic essay \\u201cA Man,\\u201d delights with this epistolary poem\\u2014brief, by Popian standards\\u2014full of wit and life. Like all his poems, it displays a beautiful facility with rhyme and meter, (Pope was a master of the heroic couplet), and a beautiful sense of compassion to the young woman to whom it is addressed. In his poem, Miss Blount is subject to all sorts of whims and institutions\\u2014mother, aunt, the church, the squire. There are so many daydreams and visions enclosed inside \\u201cEpistle\\u201d that by the end of the poem, I\\u2019m almost lost inside its spell. Like Pope, I\\u2019m regretfully startled awake from this enchanting picture of Miss Blount, and want to return immediately to the poem\\u2019s beginning: to relive once more the few, evanescent moments in which Miss Blount is again young, willful, alive\\u2014a product both of Pope\\u2019s attentive admiration, and mine.
Alexander Pope, \\u201cEpistle to Miss Blount, On Her Leaving the Town, After the Coronation\\u201d\\xa0
Music: \\u201cShift of Currents\\u201d by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0
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