Inspiration

Robert Service

How often have I started out

With no thought in my noodle,

And wandered here and there about,

Where fancy bade me toddle;

Till feeling faunlike in my glee

I've voiced some gay distiches,

Returning joyfully to tea,

A poem in my britches.

A-squatting on a thymy slope

With vast of sky about me,

I've scribbled on an envelope

The rhymes the hills would shout me;

The couplets that the trees would call,

The lays the breezes proffered . . .

Oh no, I didn't think at all -

I took what Nature offered.

For that's the way you ought to write -

Without a trace of trouble;

Be super-charged with high delight

And let the words out-bubble;

Be voice of vale and wood and stream

Without design or proem:

Then rouse from out a golden dream

To find you've made a poem.

So I'll go forth with mind a blank,

And sea and sky will spell me;

And lolling on a thymy bank

I'll take down what they tell me;

As Mother Nature speaks to me

Her words I'll gaily docket,

So I'll come singing home to tea

A poem in my pocket.

this poem made me laugh, because having a poem in your pocket was what ive been hearing ALL YEAR and honestly, i didnt really get what it meant. i got the concept of always thinking about one, and “carrying it with you” but it didnt hit me completely until i read this poem. poetry isnt supposed to be about a one time thing. it is supposed to weave in and out through our lives, and you have the random moments where you go “didnt i read about that in a poem one time?” it makes you think, it branches you out, and gives you a new outlook on many aspects of life. as i turn the page in the “high school” part of my life, and go into the college chapter,  i cant help but think my outlook on things is that much broader because of the poetry i have been able to read.  i think thats what Service was trying to get at when he wrote this. poetry is supposed to give you inspriation in places you never thought possible. This is what makes it such a unique style of writing.

A Loaf of Poetry
by Naoshi Koriyama

you mix
the dough
of experience
with
the yeast
of inspiration
and knead it well
with love
and pound it
with all your might
and then
leave it
until
it puffs out big
with its own inner force
and then
knead it again
and
shape it
into a round form
and bake it
in the oven
of your heart

i felt this poem relates to pretty much everything that we’ve been doing with poetry all year. the poets mix together words and create the masterpiece of the poem. then once we read it, we’re the ones who “pound” out the dough the second time after the poem is perfected, and kneed out our own thoughts and inspirations that come from it. it is formed in the oven of our hearts, based on our own life experiences and personal look at not what the poem means, but how it means. it seems like this is what we’ve been trying to accomplish all year

If

What none knows is when, not if.

Now that your life nears its end

when you turn back what you see

is ruin. You think, It is a prison. No,

it is a vast resonating chamber in

which each thing you say or do is

new, but the same. What none knows is

how to change. Each plateau you reach, if

single, limited, only itself, in-

cludes traces of  all the others, so that in the end

limitation frees you, there is no

end, if   you once see what is there to see.

You cannot see what is there to see —

not when she whose love you failed is

standing next to you. Then, as if refusing the know-

ledge that life unseparated from her is death, as if

again scorning your refusals, she turns away. The end

achieved by the unappeased is burial within.

Familiar spirit, within whose care I grew, within

whose disappointment I twist, may we at last see

by what necessity the double-bind is in the end

the  figure  for human life, why what we love is

precluded always by something else we love, as if

each no we speak is yes, each yes no.

The prospect is mixed but elsewhere the forecast is no

better. The eyrie where you perch in

exhaustion has food and is out of  the wind, if

cold. You feel old, young, old, young: you scan the sea

for movement, though the promise of  sex or food is

the prospect that bewildered  you to this end.

Something in you believes that it is not the end.

When you wake, sixth grade will start. The finite you know

you fear is infinite: even at eleven, what you love is

what you should not love, which endless bullies in-

tuit unerringly. The future will be different: you cannot see

the end. What none knows is when, not if.

White was relaying a message to the reader in this poem. Nobody knows when something will happen, or if something will happen. all that we know is that death is inevitable, and looking back, each plateu you reach you can’t change, but only work with as you reach it. the end is not there, once you see what there is to be seen. however, you are unable to see clearly when things fail you. i can relate to this in that when you are trying to reach a certain point in your life, and you are unsuccessful, the realization of your failure is staring at you in the face. it is something that can be accepted, but not very easily. the last stanza really stood out to me.

“Something in you believes that it is not the end.” (…) ” The future will be different: you cannot see the end. What none knows is when, not if.”   when things come to an end, good or bad, you can not believe how fast they end. the fact that i am graduating is exactly like that. i can not believe it’s ending. and my future is unknown, and i can never see the end. questioning if something happens is not something i can do, because there are things that will happen, its just a matter of when. i think White is trying to relay that message. it is not a matter of if something will happen, it is the matter of waiting for it to come. once it does, was it worth it in the end?

Good-by to you whom I shall see tomorrow,
Next year and when I’m fifty; still good-by.
This is the leave we never really take.
If you were dead or gone to live in China
The event might draw your stature in my mind.
I should be forced to look upon you whole
The way we look upon the things we lose.
We see each other daily and in segments;
Parting might make us meet anew, entire.

You asked me once, and I could give no answer,
How far dare we throw off the daily ruse,
Official treacheries of face and name,
Have out our true identity? I could hazard
An answer now, if you are asking still.
We are a small and lonely human race
Showing no sign of mastering solitude
Out on this stony planet that we farm.
The most that we can do for one another
Is let our blunders and our blind mischances
Argue a certain brusque abrupt compassion.
We might as well be truthful. I should say
They’re luckiest who know they’re not unique;
But only art or common interchange
Can teach that kindest truth. And even art
Can only hint at what disturbed a Melville
Or calmed a Mahler’s frenzy; you and I
Still look from separate windows every morning
Upon the same white daylight in the square.

And when we come into each other’s rooms
Once in awhile, encumbered and self-conscious,
We hover awkwardly about the threshold
And usually regret the visit later.
Perhaps the harshest fact is, only lovers–
And once in a while two with the grace of lovers–
Unlearn that clumsiness of rare intrusion
And let each other freely come and go.
Most of us shut too quickly into cupboards
The margin-scribbled books, the dried geranium,
The penny horoscope, letters never mailed.
The door may open, but the room is altered;
Not the same room we look from night and day.

It takes a late and slowly blooming wisdom
To learn that those we marked infallible
Are tragi-comic stumblers like ourselves.
The knowledge breeds reserve. We walk on tiptoe,
Demanding more than we know how to render.
Two-edged discovery hunts us finally down;
The human act will make us real again,
And then perhaps we come to know each other.

Let us return to imperfection’s school.
No longer wandering after Plato’s ghost,
Seeking the garden where all fruit is flawless,
We must at last renounce that ultimate blue
And take a walk in other kinds of weather.
The sourest apple makes its wry announcement
That imperfection has a certain tang.
Maybe we shouldn’t turn our pockets out
To the last crumb or lingering bit of fluff,
But all we can confess of what we are
Has in it the defeat of isolation–
If not our own, then someone’s, anyway.

So I come back to saying this good-by,
A sort of ceremony of my own,
This stepping backward for another glance.
Perhaps you’ll say we need no ceremony,
Because we know each other, crack and flaw,
Like two irregular stones that fit together.
Yet still good-by, because we live by inches
And only sometimes see the full dimension.
Your stature’s one I want to memorize–
Your whole level of being, to impose
On any other comers, man or woman.
I’d ask them that they carry what they are
With your particular bearing, as you wear
The flaws that make you both yourself and human.

this poem really made me think about the huge step i am about to take in the coming month, graudating from high school. i know it sounds very cliche, but the first stanza stood out to me. it’s saying good bye to people, even those you will see the next day and the days to follow. things come and go, but everytime you say goodbye it could very well be the last. so when we go to graduate in less than a month, we are going to be saying goodbye, most likely never to see a lot of the people we are so used to seeing every day again.

“And when we come into each other’s rooms
Once in awhile, encumbered and self-conscious,
We hover awkwardly about the threshold
And usually regret the visit later.”  we can never go back to high school, and relive the way in which we went about our lives. it will never be the same, and if we try to relive it, it will never be accurate. “The door may open, but the room is altered; Not the same room we look from night and day.” We are constantly changing. and like it or not, we can never go back to the way we were.

We’d rather have the iceberg than the ship,
although it meant the end of travel.
Although it stood stock-still like cloudy rock
and all the sea were moving marble.
We’d rather have the iceberg than the ship;
we’d rather own this breathing plain of snow
though the ship’s sails were laid upon the sea
as the snow lies undissolved upon the water.
O solemn, floating field,
are you aware an iceberg takes repose
with you, and when it wakes may pasture on your snows?

This is a scene a sailor’d give his eyes for.
The ship’s ignored. The iceberg rises
and sinks again; its glassy pinnacles
correct elliptics in the sky.
This is a scene where he who treads the boards
is artlessly rhetorical. The curtain
is light enough to rise on finest ropes
that airy twists of snow provide.
The wits of these white peaks
spar with the sun. Its weight the iceberg dares
upon a shifting stage and stands and stares.

The iceberg cuts its facets from within.
Like jewelry from a grave
it saves itself perpetually and adorns
only itself, perhaps the snows
which so surprise us lying on the sea.
Good-bye, we say, good-bye, the ship steers off
where waves give in to one another’s waves
and clouds run in a warmer sky.
Icebergs behoove the soul
(both being self-made from elements least visible)
to see them so: fleshed, fair, erected indivisible.

i think bishop is trying to say that we would rather have an iceberg than a ship, because an iceberg is not constant, and the outcome is unknown. where as when it comes to a ship, you know your definite location, and where it is going to end up. “Good-bye, we say, good-bye, the ship steers off
where waves give in to one another’s waves and clouds run in a warmer sky.
Icebergs behoove the soul (both being self-made from elements least visible) to see them so: fleshed, fair, erected indivisible.” bishop is having us say goodbye to the ship, and goodbye to the concrete ideal of life. she wants us to “live on an iceberg,” and live a life where not everything is clearly cut for you. what the iceberg is, and what it represents, changes from person to person. whats important is how you yourself define it

how would you define your iceberg?

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

 –Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied.  It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster

when i first read this poem, i thought that bishop was talking about the general things you loose at time progresses.. the loss of a loved one, the loss of time, and just the general process of life. using that, i found that i was able to relate to this poem as a graduating senior, and realizing the whole idea of “loss of innocence.” i am no longer that young girl who went running to her parents at the sign of trouble, but i am able to take care of things on my own and be my own person. i have lost that innocence that comes with being a child, and am now (even legally so) an adult about to enter college. you move through life and people and things come and go, and sometimes when they’re over there is that missing of them, but it is not a disaster that comes from it. you move on through life, and things change. i think that is what bishop is trying to portray, that the importance is not when you lose things, its how you let it affect you and live your life.

“Just keep on like I do and pay no attention. You’ll find that people always will complain about the atmosphere, either too hot or too cold too bright or too dark, days too short or too long. If you don’t appear at all one day they think you’re lazy

or dead. Just keep right on, I like it. “

i think in this poem O’Hara was trying to tell us to keep living our lives and doing what makes us happy even if it won’t necessarily please everyone around you. it really hit me with the idea that i’m trying to choose what college im going to be attending, and whats important about my decision is that i’m happy, and nobody else. so i will weight out the options, and try to figure out which one will result in me being the happiest.  but a lot of the tim its hard to try to only think about yourself, because everyone is constantly trying to please as many people as possible, its human nature.  but what o’hara is trying to say is to make an attempt to please you, even if not everyone is going to like it.

“And now that you are making your own days, so to speak, even if no one reads you but me you won’t be depressed. Not everyone can look up, even at me. It

hurts their eyes.”

even if it wont please everyone, as long as you make decisions that please yourself, you wont be depressed. thats whats important in making decisions in your life, making yourself happy.

I see Mike’s painting, called SARDINES.

I really enjoyed reading works by Frank O’Hara, more than i have of any other poet in a while. his style of writing is so different, and so personal towards the reader. The title of this poem really grabbed me, because i know that i am in no way a painter or a poet, so doing these blogs sometimes is not something i can do very easily. It was interesting to see how both him and Mike Goldberg wrote/drew about something that wasn’t included in the final product, but became the title of it anyway. It’s things like that that made me think about the poems i’ve read, and paintings i’ve seen, and looked back and thought hm.. what did i just read? the meaning to them is found deeper than just looking at it. it’s like what we talked about in class, you have to look at how something means, not literally what it means.

Little Fly,

Thy summer’s play My thoughtless hand Has brushed away.  Am not I A fly like thee? Or art not thou A man like me?  For I dance And drink, and sing, Till some blind hand Shall brush my wing.  If thought is life And strength and breath And the want Of thought is death;  Then am I A happy fly, If I live, Or if I die.

This poem made me think about the idea that we seldom talk about, the idea that to everyone else, you are just a person, a number, a fly. You have your small close group of people that surround you, but to everyone else you can easily just be swatted away. also, it made me think about the disney movies that have animals as humans, living real life situations ( such as the lion king, nemo, madagascar). And even though we look at those movies as mearly fun, animated, and non realistic, is it possible that animals live like us? What is it that really defines a human. There are the textbook answers to it, but animals are living and breathing and walking just like we are. it is just an interesting concept to think about, how the way in which the word human has been defined puts a perspective on things. because like this poem says, we are the fly. we live happily and die, just like they do. we are on ein the same

A un Desconocido I was looking for your hair, black as old lava on an island of white coral. I dreamed it deserted you and came for me, wrapped me in its funeral ribbons

and tied me a bow of salt.

 Here’s where I put my demise: desiring fire in a web of tide, marrying the smell of wet ashes to the sweet desert of your slate. My intelligent mammal, male of my species, twin sun to a world not of my making, you reduce me to the syrup of the moon, you boil my bones in the absence of hands.  Where is your skin, parting me? Where is the cowlick under your kiss teasing into purple valleys? Where are your wings, the imaginary tail and its exercise? Where would I breed you? In the neck of my secret heart where you’ll go to the warmth of me biting into that bread where crumbs crack and scatter and feed us our souls;  if only you were a stone I could

throw, if only I could have you.

in spanish, desconocido means unknown. In this poem Cervantes is referring to something she was looking for, but doesnt know where to find it.

 “if only you were a stone I could

throw, if only I could have you.”

    when looking for something you don’t know exactly how to classify it until it is within your grasp. like rocks, they are all rocks at a simple glance, but when you take one and look at it for yourself, you begin to define it. this is much like how you are to the universe. to the people that surround you and to yourself, you are someone, and known. but to the universe, you are just another stone in the garden, unknown to everyone.

  it’s almost as if this unknown she is searching for is a lost love. “Where is your skin, parting me? Where is the cowlick under your kiss teasing into purple valleys?” it seems to be something she used to know, and used to be able to define. but now that it’s gone, it is unknown to her and something she is not able to grasp.