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Donovan Leitch
“A word of advice: There's no shame in mimicking a hero or two”
(rock singer accused of being a Dylan imitator)
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Nat Lipstadt
you did not awake today,
announcing to no one particular,
I am today, as of now, a poet original
I will employ words in new combinations,
try & tricking you to believing my everything,
is cutting edge, unheard, dare I say it?
original.
yet that very word betrays us/me,
we all have origins, seen and unaware,
we intuit breathing words through our ears
the people’s patois, artists who invade us
subconsciously, placing jargon of beauty
on our paths overlapping, life’s happenstance!
Me? Ogden & Walt, Dylan & Dylan, Donne & Cohen,
others unknown to you, when we stumble into one another
while traipsing verbal trails, toe stubbing on herbal pebbles,
rocky sounds, adjective crumbs
know. ac-know-ledge. if you can. sometimes you can’t…
other’s words subtle invade, takeover a particular neuron yours.
waiting for your employment, recirculating air mutuel.
yet, you understand, tho total recall is an impossibility,
so you pay extra for storage, napkin scribbles, torn pages, bytes of
snippets that face slap, irritate, burrs that burn inside
reach out to the masters, join your fellow plagiarists, ranks,
well worth joining, do not frustration forswear, nothing new,
under the sun, but yet! that very Sun rises daily, a familiar path
but miraculous diurnal, subtle modified, anew & renewed,
nonetheless, asking you for your worship, you very own
novel sunrise prayer, so come!
when gifting, regifting, write with reckless abandon,
commit, recall, conspire, despair, then inspire & believe!
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Kurt Vonnegut
“In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write a famous author and ask for advice. Kurt Vonnegut was the only one to respond - and his response is magnificent: “Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:
I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.
What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.
Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.
Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?
Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash recepticals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.
God bless you all!”
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