Mentors

On this journey, I have had some brilliant teachers. I'm told that when the time is right, you will find the teacher. I certainly have found many to help me along the way. I was always attracted to poetry. Then when I began to write my poems I met my mentors and the meetings were by chance. I believe that is the way it's supposed to be.

Here is a quote from one of my mentors: "The associative paths… allow us to leap from one part of the brain to another and lay out their contraries. Moreover it’s possible that what we call “mythology” deals precisely with these abrupt juxtapositions.… using what Joseph Campbell called “mythological thinking,” it moves the energy along a spectrum… awaken the “lost music,” walk on the sea, cross the river from instinct to spirit." —Robert Bly http://youtu.be/7uhUo93PUNE

Xenia by Coleman Barks

Coleman Barks surprised me with a gift.  It was his book Xenia—a book of definitions—

words he had culled from the OED and other arcane places.  Some words were the creation of Coleman himself.  I had just spent ten days in a poetry workshop that he led at Hollyhock on Cortes Island in British Columbia.  The word Coleman wanted me to look at and perhaps meditate upon was “isomer,” defined as “something very like but in another energy state.”

Is that how Coleman saw me?  In another energy state?  I know my energy state at Hollyhock was happy.  Our group hiked, swam in the sea and we even gathered oysters that we consumed on the half shell.  We saw otters, eagles and other wildlife.  And we wrote poems. It was a wonderful time. I wrote this poem after a hike with a naturalist who showed us the tiny jawbone of a shrew he had found.

We chased all our bugbears away

with the jawbone of a shrew

as we hiked

all down the rocky

blue afternoon.

 Otter.  Watercolor by Barbara Spring

For me, writing poetry is a journey of discovery and a nitor delight. (Nitor is from Xenia)

Coleman had inscribed Xenia with this note: 

 For Barbara, With gratitude and admiration for your writing.  Coleman

The feeling is mutual.

http://www.amazon.com/Barbara-Spring/e/B002PI5IQQ