Thoughts on life, love and faith by Plasticmind.

Our English class begins our study of Dandelion Wine this week, and as we do, I am reminded of just how vivid a stroke Bradbury can muster. His way with words is exquisite, and unlike Steinbeck and Hemmingway, Bradbury delights in the details, saturating each word with brilliant imagery to create a sort of literary impressionism.

I've read the book so many times now that the theme of "finding beauty in the ordinary" that struck me initially is starting to melt like a crayon on the dashboard, dribbling together with the broader topics of love and time. His poem Byzantium in the introduction justly captures the effect I'm trying, without much success I might add, to describe:

Byzantium, I come not from,
But from another time and place
Whose race was simple, tried and true;

As boy
I dropped me forth in Illinois.
A name with neither love nor grace
Was Waukegan, there I came from
And not, good friends, Byzantium.

And yet in looking back I see
From topmost part of farthest tree
A land as bright, beloved and blue
As any Yeats found to be true.

Though mediocre all our Fates
And Mayor not as bright as Yeats
Yet still we knew ourselves. The sum?
Byzantium.
Byzantium.