(Portrait of Sir Philip Sidney)
一早起床就看到 Sidney 的 ”Weaker Worker”。真好！一大早（六點十二分）詩人就醒啦！
開始讀著......原以為是華茲華斯 “A Solitary Reaper” 的低地美學版，沒多久就知道，席德正在實現他年輕時期的文學主張。太好了！幫夏娃眾女兒說話的騎士精神！（席德最好是否認，然後像 Sir Philip Sidney一樣，寫一篇
“An Apology for Poetry, 那...我們眾讀者就有福了”！）
不過最後一個 stanza 我是有點小意見的。讀完 “Weaker Worker” 雖然知道
Sid 強調的是 dignity, 心中響起的還是 Nikki Giovanni 的 ”Nikki-Rosa,” 借這首詩來當回應。
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“Nikki-Rosa”
By Nikki Giovanni
childhood remembrances are always a drag
if you’re Black
you always remember things like living in Woodlawn
with no inside toilet
and if you become famous or something
they never talk about how happy you were to have your mother
all to yourself and
how good the water felt when you got your bath from one of those
big tubs that folk in Chicago barbecue in
and somehow when you talk about home
it never gets across how much you
understood their feelings
as the whole family attended meetings about Hollydale
and even though you remember
your biographers never understand
your father’s pain as he sells his stock
and another dream goes
and though you’re poor it isn’t poverty that
concerns you
and though they fight a lot
it isn’t your father’s drinking that makes any difference
but only that everybody is together and you
and your sister have happy birthdays and very good
Christmases
and I really hope no white person ever has cause to write about me
because they never understand that Black love is Black wealth and they’ll
probably talk about my hard childhood and never understand that
all the while I was quite happy.
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Sir Philip Sidney wrote An Apology for Poetry (or, The Defence of Poetry)
in 1581, and published it in 1595.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Apology_for_PoetryFYI:
A Defence of Poesie and Poems, by Sidney
ftp://opensource.nchc.org.tw/gutenberg/etext99/dfncp10.txt
(其實熊媽以前教詩的時候已經特別強調 Sir Philip Sidney 在英國文學上的重要地位。Sir Philip Sidney 的 ”Astrophel and Stella” 套詩中第一首十四行詩的尾句：”Fool!” said my Muse to me, ”look in thy heart and write.” 據說已經變成所有詩人的座右銘了。 請見我們的課本:
A CONCISE TREASURY OF GREAT POEMS, P. 50)
