I am not I

ironically, after my post last night where i expressed how i feel stupid and uneducated and don't know where to start to amend that, i got facebook assigned to post a poem. i had to post a poem by a poet assigned to me though. and i was dismayed to get ee cummings. i didn't like that for two reasons. one that it's literally hard to type out a lot of ee cummings poems, what with all the funny spacings that seem integral to his poetry. and two, while i used to rather like ee cummings, i'm just not in the mood for him anymore. he's too optimistically happy and in love for my taste.

and i didn't even really like the poem that i ended up posting. which was "i shall imagine life."

but no matter. what i want to post here is a poem that i really like. "I Am NOT I" by Juan Ramon Jimenez (please put little accent marks above the o and above the first e in jimenez because i don't know how.)


I am not I.
I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
who remains calm and silent while I talk,
and forgives, gently, when I hate,
who walks where I am not,
who will remain standing when I die.

i like this poem a lot. Juan Ramon Jimenez (with the above mentioned accent marks) was born in 1881 and died in 1958, the year after i was born. he won the Nobel prize for literature in 1956, the year before i was born. i guess at first he wanted to be a painter, but instead he studied to be a lawyer. but i suppose he didn't like that so much and turned to poetry. he was spanish. he became really depressed after his father died. he spent some time in a sanatorium.