Stealing like a poet
Hello Builders!
I remember the first book of poetry I ever purchased.
the end of the world
was neither fire nor ice
was likes and follows
When I was a senior in high school, I bought this book:
I still have it on my bookshelf. It’s hard to explain why this basic collection was so transformational. Everything I’ve ever created has its roots in these poems. The haiku comic above is a direct reference to a Robert Frost poem I first encountered in the pages of that book:
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.—Robert Frost
I wrote my poem on August 25, 2019, three and a half years ago. I still worry that the culture fostered by social media may help hasten the extinction of our species, but now I’m doing something about it by sending as much poetry into the algorithms as possible.
you cannot push or
pull a flower to make it
bloom any faster
Cheers,
Jason
I have that same book on my shelf, which I bought a few years after high school, probably because I'm a few years older than you are. I still love that book. I love all six of those poets and without even opening the book I can see the font and layout in my mind's eye, it is very pleasant reading and the paper is great too. I love that the poets are a real mix of styles and yet in each one there is some heart at the core that I connect with. Just as I somehow weirdly connect with haiku robot. ;-)
Brilliant! Thank you so much. As a fellow poet, I absolutely love the idea of stealing like a poet.