Joseph L. Kagle, Jr. Peace Essays

The Way to Stir the Muse

Creativity is the source of new ideas and new images. Without new ideas and new images peace will not be possible because the old ideas are welded into the fabric of nationalism, borders and ‘mine’. Sometimes to discover the deepest ideas that are just scratching the surface of consciousness, we must change our way of stating things, we must ‘stir the muse’. When we do that, we may not be successful in creating the greatest beauty but we do open doors to ways of seeing that were hidden.

Here’s the way to stir the muse

     It has been years since I wrote my last poem. What in­spired me to sit down before the frightening blank screen and begin writing poetry again is the image of Clara Fentress in her 90s still writing poetry, amazing us younger humans as she continues to grow.

So, the other day I wrote a new poem. Here is the process:

§      Start someplace, like with yourself.

§    Without immediate judgment, place the idea out on the page where all the crit­ical world can see it.

§         Allow the images the freedom of association.

§    Notice the internal pattern to the ideas as they flow from your hands on the keys to your mind's eye.

§    Remember that no image is precious. Explore the universe of words available.

§         Believe in your own crit­ical sense when reviewing what you write.

§         Lastly, revise, revise, re­vise and then stop before you overbake the creative soul food.

      I started with my body and my mind. Both are getting richly older. I find that perspi­ration and inspiration still go hand and hand. I look into my mirror of truth.

  I try never to be afraid of risk or being laughed at by oth­ers. Last, I try to allow the poem to be me and yet have a life of its own. I say to myself, "Leave the reader with an open question which life will fill." The poem is called, "Like A Nomad."

   Wiping the years from the wetness of my face,

I forge new wrinkles to my newborn thoughts

And ponder the screen of life in living color

While never wasting endless time and space.

Some unexpected thought runs its course

 Across the wasteland of my open mind

 Like a nomad journeying to a watering hole,

 He trudges to a mental oasis in the sands of remorse.

 He spins precious time and lingers a second too long.

 He spins and turns on a mi­crochip of luscious love.

 He revolves again to where the clock starts this trip

 And sings to the rain and wind gone wrong.

Now I make waves for Aph­rodite's well-shaped toes

Where the white froth tops my root beer dreams

And my older maiden struts her well-traveled legs

To the guru on the tabletop who knows

  Which way the wind is allowed to travel

And what kind of banana custard to eat

For a last supper, a long-lost feast of caring.

Questions fill the air like “I must truly care

Anymore," while my dead mother stands

Behind me in the mirror of my mind

And I see dead fathers in my face of wear.

Joy is the nomad's way to cheat monster death.

Joy is a nomad's weapon edged with laughter.

Joy is my nomad's shield against routine being.

Joy is what gives each mo­ment real breadth.

Like a nomad, just like a real "no mad".

The search for creativity may be helped by losing one of our senses: our voice, and in that moment we turn inward to speak. In searching for peace it is this inner search that starts cultural and global solutions that are peaceful.

When a voice is lost

I found new self by ‘oralizing’ inwardly

 work of a 13th century mystic poet

   Have you ever lost your voice? You know, really lost it so that all that comes from the major hole in your face is raspy, hushed air sounds, sort of like a busted steam engine.

   It happened to me for five days. When it came back, I wondered, "Where had it gone?" And was I the same person to this new voice?

   The voice is so much a part of what we take for granted, ME, that when it goes away it gives pause to wonder if the same voice will return.

    At Subway, where they know by heart what kind: of sandwich I have every week, they asked, "What do you want?"

   I said, "You know — the same, but no tomatoes until I am sure that the voice I lost and now returns has not changed my life."

      "How about extra jalapenos? They will warm up the old voice."

       I tried the jalapeno cure but my old voice did not return.

     Losing my voice made me consider the act of Speaking, and how poetry, when I read it aloud, changes me, changes the sounds that my mouth forms.

Changes breathing patterns

     I remember a poet once telling me that poetry changes our breathing patterns. When I read "The force that drives the flower drives my green age, that blasts the roots of trees is my destroyer," it changes the pattern of our sounds.

     "To be or not to be" makes me Shakespeare, swinging between two logical extremes.

    When I say aloud — "I shall be telling this with a sigh, somewhere ages and ages hence. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less trav­eled by and that has made of the difference" — in that breath, I lose my voice. I become Robert Frost, coming to woods with hushed wonder, boldly step­ping into the darkening forest, and then again becoming quiet when I exit the mystery of shadowed nature.

     It is interesting that we attempt to become our children as they form the beginnings of words. We say goo-goo, da-da, ma-ma sounds. We become the child as we sound the child.

     Rap artists imitate the street sounds and the ca­dence of inner-city life.

     One day in Arkansas I heard Maya Angelou read a rap, rope-skipping poem and some Shakespeare to a predominantly Afro-American audience. An irate man called to her, "Why did you read Shake­speare's poetry today? I know that you love Lan­gston Hughes."

   She smiled back, saying gently: "Shakespeare and Hughes are black women when I read them."

     She went on to explain that they became her and she became them. She lost her voice and found her expanded self in reading them aloud.

     My children criticize me when I get obsessed with a sound, an oral pattern, a poem that strikes to the core of my breathing. I tell them that some so­cieties call that process "oralizing."

     It comes from the oral tradition of learning. If I hear it then it becomes part of my being and I must sound it out again. Great poetry should be heard to be understood. When someone only reads Shake­speare, the meanings can be lost. Hearing the play or the poem, the meaning is clear or irrelevant.

     For days I lost my voice. My children and staff - rejoiced. What they did not know is that I found a new self by reading and internally "oralizing" the poetry of a 13th century mystic poet.

     He gave me the words that a new life is built upon. He said, through another's voice, "Let the beauty we love be what we do."

     When my voice decided to come back, I changed that idea to "Let the beauty I love be me." No one really loses a voice without finding something bet­ter in return if one will "oralize" hard enough.