“One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
German dramatist, novelist, poet, & scientist (1749 – 1832)
Word to that, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Word. Hear a little song? Check. (Omara Portuondo is /on/ it…) See a fine picture? Daily Dose of Imagery has it covered (or I could always turn here, depends on what Goethe meant by ‘fine’). Speak a few reasonable words? Well, I certainly speak at various points during the day. And as a general rule, I try to keep myself reasonable. 🙂
But a good poem? Man.
Robert Priest from Now magazine on how most people are introduced to poetry: “It was one of the crueler inflictions of the school system. Teachers always seemed to choose the least age-appropriate and most inert verses, kind of like a dead virus meant to inoculate against any future infection of the poetic sort.”
Indeed.
I have found a few poems I enjoy. A couple by Walt Whitman. A couple by George Bowering. I seem to consistently enjoy the winning poem of the Toronto Poetry Slam. And the elusive one-poem-I-still-haven’t-got-a-copy-of by Eavan Boland (come to think of it, I think I often enjoy the poetry of Irish women. They’re my peeps).
But I lack a consistent and reliable poetry source. Which means an incrementally and continuously expanding hole in my Goethe assignment.
Got one today though. By Jelaluddin Rumi:
Out Beyond Ideas of Wrongdoing and Rightdoing
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
Doesn’t make any sense.