Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Creative Inspiration: Robert Frost and David Ray

"New" is at the very heart of creativity -- so we're going to try something new here at Creative Instigation. Now and then, I'll bring you poems, stories, Web sites, whatever, that I find inspirational. And since this blog thrives with your creative input, I'm hoping you'll post your own inspirational ideas!

We'll start with a David Ray poem titled* Thanks, Robert Frost. For me, there's double inspiration in this poem -- the way Frost turns the question around with his answer, and the fact that Ray hears the poem. Good writers are good listeners. Enjoy!

Thanks, Robert Frost
© David Ray

Do you have hope for the future?
someone asked Robert Frost, toward the end.
Yes, and even for the past, he replied,
that it will turn out to have been all right
for what it was, something we can accept,
mistakes made by the selves we had to be,
not able to be, perhaps, what we wished,
or what looking back half the time it seems
we could so easily have been, or ought ...
The future, yes, and even for the past,
that it will become something we can bear.
And I too, and my children, so I hope,
will recall as not too heavy the tug
of those albatrosses I sadly placed
upon their tender necks. Hope for the past,
yes, old Frost, your words provide that courage,
and it brings strange peace that itself passes
into past, easier to bear because
you said it, rather casually, as snow
went on falling in Vermont years ago.


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I may have pointed this out before, but it's good to repeat key messages: Harper Audio has wonderful recordings of Frost reading some of his classics ... I think his voice alone is inspirational!

*Poems and books are "titled." They are not "entitled." Someone needs to tell the editors at Vanity Fair this.

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