This is a small poetry club that started as a poetry email exchange between two friends. Our goal is to read a poem everyday, and this blog is one way to help keep us accountable. There is only one valid rule in poetry club: there are no rules in poetry club. Read any poem, in any order, with any or no interactions. You decide. We only suggest you read poetry!
13 Nov: "Mentor" by Timothy Murphy
"Mentor"
For Robert Francis
Had I known, only known
when I lived so near,
I'd have gone, gladly gone
foregoing my fear
of the wholly grown
and the nearly great.
But I learned alone,
so I learned too late.
Knowledge of the cycle of life coming later in life. I wonder if it was a particular loved one that helped him see the beauty in this cycle or if it was his mental maturity taking course on its own.
Collaboration and collective learning. This is what makes writing, emails, and Internet so great. We can instantly get information, but maybe more importantly, we can collaborate with multiple mentors, teachers, or peers often and regularly.
Solitude is great, but we are a social animal that works better together.
Back to the poem, is wholly grown a mindset? You can be an adult without being wholly grown. The narrator had access to an incredible resource and did not utilize it. "You don't know what you got until it's gone."
Another new idea, what will people lack in the future that we take for granted today? The environment comes to mind.
The role of a mentor in our lives is grand. Again, to the yoga philosophy I have been studying, all of the ancient Indians had gurus, or a "teacher of light"...someone who has been on the journey and put up signs. But, in the end, all light bulbs come on when they come on, we can know and not know...we can read and read and read and yet not get the message until we grow. Until we learn the next thing before we can really learn that other thing. How much learning can we really do alone?
Knowledge of the cycle of life coming later in life. I wonder if it was a particular loved one that helped him see the beauty in this cycle or if it was his mental maturity taking course on its own.
ReplyDelete"But I learned alone." Without a mentor.
ReplyDeleteCollaboration and collective learning. This is what makes writing, emails, and Internet so great. We can instantly get information, but maybe more importantly, we can collaborate with multiple mentors, teachers, or peers often and regularly.
Solitude is great, but we are a social animal that works better together.
Back to the poem, is wholly grown a mindset? You can be an adult without being wholly grown. The narrator had access to an incredible resource and did not utilize it. "You don't know what you got until it's gone."
Another new idea, what will people lack in the future that we take for granted today? The environment comes to mind.
The role of a mentor in our lives is grand. Again, to the yoga philosophy I have been studying, all of the ancient Indians had gurus, or a "teacher of light"...someone who has been on the journey and put up signs. But, in the end, all light bulbs come on when they come on, we can know and not know...we can read and read and read and yet not get the message until we grow. Until we learn the next thing before we can really learn that other thing. How much learning can we really do alone?
ReplyDeleteYou should look into how computers learn. I'll add a link later (battery)
ReplyDelete