If you have taken an English course at the university, you must have inevitably come across the name Alden Nowlan. Does that ring a bell? My best guess is that your professor asked you to submit an assignment on “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner” by Alden Nowlan. And you did some google search with that keyword, and that’s how you landed on this page. Well, it’s your lucky day today. I have just what you need. Thank me later!
‘The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner’ by Alden Nowlan
Literal Comprehension
The speaker in the poem is an amateur poet who is trying to compose a poem about his love for his wife. He hasn’t written down the poem on paper yet. It is being processed in his mind. At the same time, his wife enters the room creating some kind of unfavorable environment for the speaker to hold his mental composition as he loses his attention. Consequently, he couldn’t finish the poem. The composition is lost. He then silently curses his wife.
Interpretation
The poem seems to be trying to tell us about the speaker’s passion for composing poems. A briefly mentioned act of his wife hints that she is either angry or playful at the moment. The inability of the speaker to hold his mental composition just for a while shows his mental deficiency or short-term memory. It causes loss for him, but he can’t scold her to her face. He only curses her silently which implies his henpecked and submissive behavior. Finally, the poem endeavors to establish a link between peace and creativity.
Critical Thinking
Consciously or unconsciously, the poet has created a poem different from the other long poems with a vague subject matter. At the same time, the subject matter of this poem is too thin that it only focuses on the love of fame, peace and creation, and scolding. The speaker curses his wife silently. Why doesn’t he scold her openly? Is he dumb@ss? Or is he afraid of that b!tch? It is better for him to go kill himself than to live a submissive life. Besides, his wife shouldn’t be blamed for his loss of the poem. In fact, it is his lack of creativity and memory weakness responsible for the loss. The speaker is trying to compose the poem about his love for his wife, but he ends up cursing her which is quite contradictory. This shows that he loves his creation more than his wife. How can such a man be a good husband?
Assimilation
I absorbed the fact from this poem that our human mind is limited and tends to have short-term memory, but this should not hamper our creations. To overcome this, we should jot down creative ideas as soon as they crop up in our minds. I realized the importance of a peaceful aura for creativity. Anyone can be a poet, and anything can be the subject matter of the poem. What we need is concentration. From now on, I’ll be carrying a pen and a piece of paper wherever I go and writing down my creations when they evolve. This will help me as I write songs for my band too. However, I never had the sort of experience as the one mentioned in the poem.
Before you go… Since you will graduate through this BBA before you know what hit you… you should read this one: Wake up. Kick Ass. Repeat.
