Poetry saving America Day 18 #NationalPoetryMonth

Before you read today's posting, we strongly suggest that you take a moment and listen to Tony Hoagland himself read the seventeenth of his Twenty Poems That Could Save America. We'll wait right here. Back already? OK, here's what Hoagland writes about "Song of Speaks Fluently." We love it. It reminds us of many of Gary Snyder's poems.

poems rehearse the future
Poems, some more than others, are songs, passed down through time. It is amazing how far and how long they can travel and still remain fresh. Was there ever a poet named Speaks-Fluently? That is the name assigned to the author of this Native-American poem of Osage origin, passed on to me by another poet. “Song of Speaks-Fluently” is as light as a nursery rhyme and as serious as a gospel; wry, yet firm about the facts of life. And what a flavor of reliability it bears from its at once distant and personal source.

To have to carry your own corn far —
who likes it?
To follow the black bear through the thicket —
who likes it?
To hunt without profit, to return without anything —
who likes it?
You have to carry your own corn far.
You have to follow the black bear.
You have to hunt without profit.
If not, what will you tell the little ones? What
will you speak of?
For it is bad not to use the talk which God has sent us.
I am Speaks-Fluently. Of all the groups of symbols,
I am a symbol by myself.

Here is the news, says the poem sympathetically: You too shall labor, and on Tuesday your enterprise shall not succeed, and on Wednesday you shall bend again to the labor before you. Now, this is a message well worth inclusion in the speech of any high school valedictorian in America. Instead of demanding favors of the universe, Speaks-Fluently tells us, we must cultivate the wisdom of the shrug and exercise the muscle of persistence. “You have to carry your own corn far. You have to hunt without profit.”

With its images of ancient farming and hunting, “Song of Speaks-Fluently” carries another quiet implication — that we readers, whatever our work, are connected to the oldest rhythms of human effort and human survival. The necessities and hazards of our lives have changed in appearance, but not in essence.

A thousand kinds of poems exist, and they point in an infinite number of directions.

a bear in a thicket

Photo by J. Harrington

Poems can point in any number of directions. Bears in thickets can run in any number of directions. Each of those is a far different tune than a "win at any cost" attitude that has come to prevail in much of our (corporate) business and almost all of our politics. If winning is the most important point, what's the point of winning? It is also bad to (mis)use the talk which God has sent us just for the sake of winning, is it not? Does America need to remember our fundamentals?

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.