“Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future.”
A famous expression that can either move you forward or make you feel right at home in the company of giants.
When it comes to inspiration for art and poetry; I have imaginative teas with these writers below and bounce my musings on their perspectives.
“Show me your poets and I’ll show you your poetry.”
Who are the poets that inspire you?
1. Khalil Gibran - Children Chapter IV
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
2. Christopher Poindexter
Contemporary Instagram poet. Typewriter posts. Short and sweet.
His writing resonates with me because of the depth through simplicity.
3. Pablo Neruda - Your Feet
When I cannot look at your face
I look at your feet.
Your feet of arched bone,
your hard little feet.
I know that they support you,
and that your sweet weight
rises upon them.
Your waist and your breasts,
the doubled purple
of your nipples,
the sockets of your eyes
that have just flown away,
your wide fruit mouth,
your red tresses,
my little tower.
But I love your feet
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon
the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me.
4. Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder - The Real Works, Interview & Talks 1964-1979.
This was the first book about poetry I received as a gift. There are some short poems, but it mostly shares Snyder’s view of the world. He inspires me with his nature-focused spirit like Thoreau combined with a 1-2-punch of the Beatknik perspective. As he weaves the mundane with the sublime.
“Snyder has looked to the Orient and to the beliefs of Native Americans for positive responses to the world, and he has tempered his studies with stints of hard physical labour as a logger and trail builder.”
5. Joy Harjo - Grace
My all-time favourite poet. The 23rd Poet Laureate, the first Native American to ever have held that honour. Each of her sentences is a poem in itself.
I think of Wind and her wild ways the year we had nothing to lose and lost it anyway in the cursed country of the fox. We still talk about that winter, how the cold froze imaginary buffalo on the stuffed horizon of snowbanks. The haunting voices of the starved and mutilated broke fences, crashed our thermostat dreams, and we couldn't stand it one more time. So once again we lost a winter in stubborn memory, walked through cheap apartment walls, skated through fields of ghosts into a town that never wanted us, in the epic search for grace.
Like Coyote, like Rabbit, we could not contain our terror and clowned our way through a season of false midnights. We had to swallow that town with laughter, so it would go down easy as honey. And one morning as the sun struggled to break ice, and our dreams had found us with coffee and pancakes in a truck stop along Highway 80, we found grace.
I could say grace was a woman with time on her hands, or a white buffalo escaped from memory. But in that dingy light it was a promise of balance. We once again understood the talk of animals, and spring was lean and hungry with the hope of children and corn.
I would like to say, with grace, we picked ourselves up and walked into the spring thaw. We didn't; the next season was worse. You went home to Leech Lake to work with the tribe and I went south. And, Wind, I am still crazy. I know there is something larger than the memory of a dispossessed people. We have seen it.
6. Hermann Hesse - Stages
As every flower fades and as all youth
Departs, so life at every stage,
So every virtue, so our grasp of truth,
Blooms in its day and may not last forever.
Since life may summon us at every age
Be ready, heart, for parting, new endeavor,
Be ready bravely and without remorse
To find new light that old ties cannot give.
In all beginnings dwells a magic force
For guarding us and helping us to live.
Serenely let us move to distant places
And let no sentiments of home detain us.
The Cosmic Spirit seeks not to restrain us
But lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces.
If we accept a home of our own making,
Familiar habit makes for indolence.
We must prepare for parting and leave-taking
Or else remain the slave of permanence.
Even the hour of our death may send
Us speeding on to fresh and newer spaces,
And life may summon us to newer races.
So be it, heart: bid farewell without end.
7. Bukowski - Go all the way
If you’re going to try, go all the way.
Otherwise, don’t even start.If you're going to try, go all the way.
This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs and maybe even your mind.
It could mean not eating for three or four days.
It could mean freezing on a park bench.
It could mean jail.
It could mean derision, mockery, isolation.Isolation is the gift.
All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it.And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds.
And it will be better than anything else you can imagine.If you’re going to try, go all the way.
There is no other feeling like that.You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire.
DO IT. DO IT. DO IT. All the way.
You will ride life straight to perfect laughter.
It’s the only good fight there is.
8. Sarojini Naidu - Song of A Dream
Once in the dream of a night I stood
Lone in the light of a magical wood,
Soul-deep in visions that poppy-like sprang;
And spirits of Truth were the birds that sang,
And spirits of Love were the stars that glowed,
And spirits of Peace were the streams that flowed
In that magical wood in the land of sleep.
Lone in the light of that magical grove,
I felt the stars of the spirits of Love
Gather and gleam round my delicate youth,
And I heard the song of the spirits of Truth;
To quench my longing I bent me low
By the streams of the spirits of Peace that flow
In that magical wood in the land of sleep.
9. Kismet, Krystle Wilson
I’m blessed to say Kismet is a friend. An artist who lives by the beauty of words and the good in a soul. She’s graced our Voices Unleashed community numerous times and each moment she shares her writing, I savour the cascade that follows.
Sapardi Djoko Darmono - Hujan Bulan Juni (June Rain)
This list could not be complete without an Indonesian poet. Bahasa Indonesia is a language that can sometimes be referred to as a simple one to learn. But my god is it a poetic one!
Hujan Bulan Juni was the first Indonesian poem that truly caught my attention. I was made aware of it on a rainy day, in the heart of Denpasar. It was recited by Bagus Saputra and Imam Barker, both incredible Indonesian poets and exceptional orators.tak ada yang lebih tabah - nothing is more steadfast
dari hujan bulan juni - than the June rain
dirahasiakannya rintik rindunya - keeping its speck from longing in secrecy
kepada pohon berbunga itu - for the blossomed tree
tak ada yang lebih bijak - nothing is wiser
dari hujan bulan juni - than the June rain
dihapusnya jejak-jejak kakinya - erasing the footprints of he
yang ragu-ragu di jalan itu - who hesitated on that street
tak ada yang lebih arif - nothing is more sensible
dari hujan bulan juni - than the June rain
dibiarkannya yang tak terucapkan - letting go of unspoken words
diserap akar pohon bunga itu - absorbed by the roots of that blossomed tree
Who are the poets that inspire you?