Don’t use the
phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry. ―
- Jack Kerouac
“If you do
follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all
the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one
you are living. Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open
where you didn’t know they were going to be.”
- Joseph Campbell
He
once wrote,
Martians used to preach
Of days they would reach the earth
Now they’ve given up
Finding what it is worth.
He
was wrong, there had never been a serious consideration for Martians to explore the
earth as it looked like a dying planet. “How did they get such an impression?”
, he wondered. And so the journey began for him to comprehend how this
perception could evolve.
Out
came the yellow high-liter with the history and sociology books as well as the
laptop googling thousands of trends and facts about the evolution of earth’s
inhabitants their attitudes, institutions, political structures, beliefs,
culture and changing. Charts, graphs, narratives and all types of analytics
were created to visually illustrate the doors of perception. Then a wave washed
him up onto the shore of enlightenment.
“Poetry!
They have never read or heard our poetry! Poetry is the language of our hearts
and souls, the living proof of the existence of the sacred within sentient
beings. ”
He
also thought of music as the voice of the divine but continued to wonder what
the Martians might think of earth and her inhabitants if they read and heard our
poetry, as it was the root of what would become songs. “Poetry is evidence of:
our compassion and passion; our love and desire for peace and concern for the
common welfare; our devotion to and appreciation for the beauty and wonder of
all that mother nature provides; our humility and hopefulness; our resilience;
our ability for our own spirits to transcend our vessels of clay; and, our
enlightenment of and faith in a great magnificence who is the reason for every
aspect of the universe.”
But
with this awareness he also became depressed, as he knew that many in this
world had lost their sense of poetry and most poets had been minimalized or
trivialized. Many contemporary poets had lost their voices or desire to have their inner
voice heard. Some "would be poets" had been led to join that carousel where
reaching for a brass ring became the objective rather than being an authentic
channel of passion. Furthermore many had become silent out of fear of being
ostracized for being a voice from the wilderness. There were some champions who
would fight the good fight but they seemed to die young.
“Maybe
if I just continue to encourage others to allow their authentic selves and
voices to flourish through poetry, that may be enough . No need to worry about
the Martian perspective now as we all have a greater challenge at hand…to save
ourselves.”
Understanding
Poetry – Dead Poets Society
Immediately
NOW watch the next click…don’t wait!
Why
do we Read and Write Poetry – Dead Poets Society
Now Some things for pilgrims and Martians
to consider
Song Of Myself – From Favorite Poem
Project
We Real Cool – From Favorite Poem
Project
The Favorite Poem Project
http://www.favoritepoem.org
"Poetry
is an act of peace." – Pablo Neruda
"To
be a poet is a condition, not a profession." – Robert Frost
Introduction to Poetry
I ask them to
take a poem
and hold it up
to the light
like a color
slide
or press an ear
against its hive.
I say drop a
mouse into a poem
and watch him
probe his way out,
or walk inside
the poem’s room
and feel the
walls for a light switch.
I want them to
waterski
across the
surface of a poem
waving at the
author’s name on the shore.
But all they
want to do
is tie the poem
to a chair with rope
and torture a
confession out of it.
They begin
beating it with a hose
to find out
what it really means.
Soneto de la Noche
By Pablo Neruda
Cuando yo
muero quiero tus manos en mis ojos:
When
I die, I want your hands upon my eyes:
quiero la
luz y el trigo de tus manos amadas
I
want the light and the wheat of your beloved hands
pasar una
vez más sobre mí su frescura:
to
pass their freshness over me one more time
sentir la
suavidad que cambió
mi
destino.
I
want to feel the gentleness that changed my destiny.
Quiero que
vivas mientras yo, dormido, te espero,
I
want you to live while I wait for you, asleep,
quiero que
tus oídos sigan
oyendo el viento,
I
want your ears to stiil hear the wind,
que huelas
el aroma del mar que amamos juntos
I
want you to smell the scent of the sea we both loved,
y que sigas
pisando la arena que pisamos.
and
to continue walking on the sand we walked on.
Quiero que
lo que amo siga vivo
I
want all that I love to keep on living,
y a ti te amé y canté sobre todas
las cosas,
and
you whom I loved and sang above all things
por eso
sigue tú
floreciendo,
florida,
To
keep flowering into full bloom.
para que
alcances todo lo que mi amor te ordena,
so
that you can touch all that my love provides you,
para que se
pasee mi sombra por tu pelo,
so
that my shadow may pass over your hair,
para que así conozcan la
razón de mi
canto.
so
that all may know the reason for my song.
- Pablo
Neruda, trans. Nicholas Lauridsen
Ulysses
It little profits that an idle
king,
By this still hearth, among these
barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete
and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed,
and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will
drink
Life to the lees: All times I have
enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly,
both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore,
and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy
Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a
name;
For always roaming with a hungry
heart
Much have I seen and known; cities
of men
And manners, climates, councils,
governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of
them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my
peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy
Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch
wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose
margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an
end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine
in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life
piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to
me
Little remains: but every hour is
saved
From that eternal silence,
something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile
it were
For some three suns to store and
hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in
desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking
star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human
thought.
This
is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the
isle,—
Well-loved of me, discerning to
fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to
make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft
degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the
good.
Most blameless is he, centred in
the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to
fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household
gods,
When I am gone. He works his work,
I mine.
There
lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas.
My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and
wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome
took
The thunder and the sunshine, and
opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and
I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his
toil;
Death closes all: but something ere
the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be
done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with
Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from
the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon
climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come,
my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer
world.
Push off, and sitting well in order
smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Amdg
Copyright 2016
All Rights Reserved JF Sobecki LLC
