Poetry Snack: Discourses on Vegetable Roots

No exercising today, primarily because I spent the day grading standardized tests. The process and task were a bore, but it was nice to have the opportunity to catch up with colleagues from across the school district who I normally don't have the chance to speak with. One by product of spending time doing those professional responsibilities which I find least desirable (grading state exams), is having the time to reflect on the question of "how did I get here?" I'm pretty sure I did not get into this "business" for this reason, although I knew it (testing) was an important part of it. I, like most tecahers, went into into a particular discipline because we loved the content... the subject... in my case, the idea of the poetry...

While in undergraduate school I took quite a few poetry courses, all dealing with analysis and none with the actual art of writing poetry. Unfortunately, I am one of those folks who can appreciate poetry in a variety of forms, but find it difficult to put pen-to-paper myself. I do, however, find some joy in writing brief observations of the natural world and the work of Robert Bly has given me some hope that the narrative paragraph can be a form of poetry.

I recently unearthed a copy of the book A Chinese Garden of Serenity which is a collection of epigrams, or meaningful sayings, from the Ming Dynasty called 'Discourses on Vegetable Roots.' These works are translated by Chao Tze-chiang. I hope that you will find the line and lyric as poetic as I have:

The attitude of people towards me may be warm or cold, but I respond neither gladly nor resentfully; the tastes of the world may be savory or insipid, but I react neither happily nor disgustedly. If one does not fall into the trap of the mundane, one knows the way of living in, and escaping from, the world.

The "answer" to happiness (I think) suggested in the preceding epigram is to neither run or over indulge in life but to experience the moments as they come. Along the same lines is the following excerpt:

Walking along a narrow path, one should lave a margin; tasting rich delicacies, on should share a morsel. These are the happiest ways of dealing with the world.

Published as a hardcover volume in 1959 by Peter Pauper Press, this book is no longer for sale on-line via Barnesandnoble.com. If you're interested in reading more, I would suggest a good used book store, which happens to be where I bought this copy for $5.00!

Adio, wli nanawalmezi.