My Altar of Bliss
—after “In the Temple of Silence”
I close the door to the world,
Listen to the music of Aum,
Listen to the hum of silence.
I close the windows of the world,
Welcome no more in my sanctuary.
Peace, silence, light, glorious, divine Love
Coax me to my temple of silence,
Coax me to my altar of peace,
Where sacred love waits to wed
My soul to the Soul of golden Bliss.
Immersed in Glory
—after “I Am the Bubble, Make Me the Sea”
Thou wak’st my senses to clear sight, glorious sound,
Intelligent touch, pure fragrance, tempered taste.
Thou wak’st my senses by immersing them in Glory
Inundating them in the silence of Thy vastness,
Spilling on them the majestic light show
Of Thy body, bound by boundlessness.
In the ocean of Thy love, my bubble heart
Contracts and expands to eternity.
My restless brain shrinks and extends
Its reach to unknown realms of wisdom.
My soul knows itself in the crash of breaking worlds
Where it stands unshaken hand in hand with Thee.
As Thou dost, so I wish to do forever,
Engulfed in the Glory of Thy sacred presence.
A slightly different version appeared in my collection Singing in Soul Silence: Voices of Faith in the third section “Chants to Poems”
Thou Art That
—after “Hymn to Brahma”
Beyond my thoughts,
Beyond my ideas,
Beyond my knowledge,
Far beyond my wisdom—
Thou are That.
Beyond my body,
Beyond my mind,
Beyond my energy,
One with my soul—
Thou art That.
Joy, Joy, Joy!
—inspired by “Ever New Joy”
Joy, joy, joy—
Morning breaks open in joy.
Light of starlight, hiding
Behind the sun.
Joy, joy, joy—
Noon breaks bread
Lovingly baked
By God-guided hands.
Joy, joy, joy—
Evening calls the faithful
To rest from a full day’s labor
Practiced by Divine decree.
Joy, joy, joy—
Night covers maya’s delusion
So the spiritual eye
May bound in brilliance.
Who says, She is Dark?
—inspired by “Thousands of Suns and Moons”
Her smile beams
With the rays
Of a millions suns.
Her skin glows
With the light
Of a million moons.
Who says, She is dark?
Only those who refuse
To open their eye
To her light.
Flood Plain
The climate changes itself to suit itself.
Humankind’s arrogant bluster adds nor
Subtracts not a tittle in the gravity of things.
Rioting winds have destroyed and played
On the flood plain since time began.
Humans controlling climate change is like
Humans saving time: Daylight Saving Time—
That imaginary figment of someone’s fevered brain:
Imagine making a blanket longer by cutting off
One end and sewing it to the other.
When the Divine Creator fashioned this mud ball
Of a planet, he gave some people the ability to sense
That this Earth is a really big orb, and no number
Of little human beings no matter how much they breathe
Can ever change what God made immutable.
My Summer Mind
Winter kept me bound
To the thought of warmer days.
My tongue remained frozen,
Figuring talk was later.
Heat was all I sought,
Waiting in rooms chilled with snow.
We did not burn each other
Or have the guts to move in a daze.
If we listened to the song,
We felt that nature would change us.
Love and knowledge may contradict
Each other in the wait of uneven things
But cold gives way to warm
As winter gives way to spring
And bodies of fire hang in the brain
Where turning feels right.
Still, it is my summer mind I seek
To keep in my heart its
Fuel to keep the arms and legs
Moving and the soul on fire.
A Prose Commentary on My Original Poem “My Summer Mind”
In my poem “My Summer Mind,” I have created a speaker who is musing upon the tension between dormancy and vitality, hesitation and movement, using the seasonal opposition of winter and summer as a governing metaphor for interior states of being. The poem is less concerned with external climate than with the mind’s fluctuating capacity for warmth, courage, and animation.
Where “Some Bones” dwelt in fragmentation and arrested spiritual development, this poem turns toward the possibility—though not the certainty—of renewal. Yet the tone remains guarded. My speaker does not claim arrival but instead reveals a consciousness caught in transition, aware of warmth as an aspiration rather than a constant possession.
The imagery moves between cold and heat, stillness and motion, silence and expression. My speaker situates herself in a liminal condition: waiting, anticipating, and attempting to summon a more vital state of mind. The poem’s underlying concern is not merely seasonal change but the discipline required to sustain inner fire once it has been glimpsed.
First Stanza: Winter as Suspension
In the opening stanza, my speaker situates herself in winter, a season that “kept [her] bound / To the thought of warmer days.” The emphasis here is not simply on cold but on deferral. The speaker is oriented toward the future, toward warmth that has not yet arrived.
The frozen tongue is especially significant. Speech is postponed, withheld under the assumption that expression belongs to a more favorable time—“Figuring talk was later.” This suggests a psychological habit of delay, a reluctance to engage fully with the present moment.
The stanza’s middle lines intensify the sense of enclosure. The rooms are interior, insulated, yet still pervaded by cold. My speaker implies that external shelter does not guarantee internal warmth.
The line “We did not burn each other / Or have the guts to move in a daze” introduces relational hesitation. Passion is avoided; risk is deferred. Even confusion—“a daze”—is rejected, suggesting that the speaker prefers stasis over the vulnerability of imperfect action.
The stanza closes with a tentative openness: “If we listened to the song, / We felt that nature would change us.” Here, my speaker gestures toward a passive hope that transformation might occur through attunement rather than effort. The “song” of nature becomes a kind of external agency, one that might effect change without requiring decisive internal movement.
Second Stanza: The Friction of Love and Knowledge
The second stanza complicates the earlier passivity by introducing an intellectual and emotional tension. My speaker acknowledges that human experience is rarely harmonious; feeling and understanding often pull in opposing directions.
The phrase “the wait of uneven things” reinforces the earlier motif of delay while adding a sense of imbalance. Time passes, but it does not resolve contradiction. Instead, it sustains it.
Yet my speaker reintroduces the natural cycle as a form of reassurance: “cold gives way to warm / As winter gives way to spring.” This transformation is not a dramatic revelation but a steady, almost inevitable progression. The movement from winter to spring serves as both metaphor and quiet argument: change is embedded in the structure of existence.
The line “And bodies of fire hang in the brain / Where turning feels right” marks a subtle but important shift inward. The warmth the speaker seeks is no longer purely external; it exists as potential within the mind itself. These “bodies of fire” suggest ideas, impulses, or passions suspended in a state of readiness.
The phrase “Where turning feels right” implies that transformation involves choice or orientation. The speaker begins to recognize that movement toward warmth is not entirely dependent on external seasons but on an internal willingness to turn.
Third Movement: Aspiration toward the Summer Mind
The closing lines crystallize the poem’s central desire: “Still, it is my summer mind I seek.” The phrasing is deliberate—my speaker does not claim to possess this state but actively seeks it.
The “summer mind” functions as a metaphor for sustained vitality: warmth, clarity, motion, and perhaps courage. It is not merely a seasonal mood but a disciplined condition the speaker wishes to “keep in [her] heart.”
The emphasis on “fuel” extends the metaphor into the realm of energy and maintenance. Warmth must be sustained; it requires ongoing attention. My speaker understands that vitality is not self-perpetuating but must be actively preserved.
The final lines—“to keep the arms and legs / Moving and the soul on fire”—bring the poem into the realm of embodied action. Unlike the earlier stasis of winter, the summer mind enables motion. Physical movement becomes a sign of inner animation, while the “soul on fire” suggests the divine union of energy and purpose.
An Afterthought
In “My Summer Mind,” I have attempted to articulate a transition from passivity to intentional vitality, though that transition remains incomplete. The poem does not celebrate arrival but instead dwells in the act of seeking—a condition that is, in itself, both necessary and unstable.
My speaker’s awareness of seasonal change serves as both comfort and challenge. While nature guarantees transformation, the maintenance of an inner “summer” requires more than passive observation. It demands orientation, effort, and a willingness to risk movement even before warmth is fully secured.
In contrast to the disintegration explored in “Some Bones,” this poem suggests the possibility of coherence, though it stops short of confirming it. The speaker recognizes that without cultivating this “summer mind,”she risks remaining in cycles of delay and hesitation.
Ultimately, the poem proposes that vitality is not merely given but chosen—and that the sustaining of inner fire is an ongoing, deliberate act.
The Poetaster
His poetastry sucked long before he wrote one line.
His windbag approach to speech spews forth
Rorschach gibberish, a kite loose in the wind.
He strings together bilge & blather in prosy, broken lines.
Each syllable a sin against language, he sounds
Like a broken record swimming in a thesaurus cesspool.
To him and his ilk, meaning is a four-letter word
A limitation that blasts his own thing
Cramps his style, like hippies against the Man.
Dead poets scald him in their perfection
He’s not only jealous, he’s incredulous
That anyone could really write a poem
His shyster ways are blistering ego trips
Laid on the gullible who never have cared
To understand or appreciate what poetry is
He’s the man behind the curtain
At the end of yellow bricking
Fanning his flame to fame.
A different version focusing on the same theme as this poem appears in my collection titled Turtle Woman & Other Poems.
A Prose Commentary on My Original Poem “The Poetaster”
In my poem “The Poetaster,” I have delivered a speaker, who delivers a blow with a pointed critique of a fraudulent artist—someone who takes on the guise of a poet without submitting to the discipline, humility, or responsibility that poetry demands.
The poem functions as both satire and indictment, using abrasive diction and exaggerated imagery to reveal the hollowness of pretension masquerading as creativity. In my humble artist opinion, human creativity is the most cherished possession held by the human heart and mind.
(Human creativity has resulted in some of humanity’s most important discoveries and inventions, making life on earth both comfortable, profitable, and inspirational. To degrade that human function with laughable, disgusting, idiotic fakery remains an abomination that corrodes the human spirit, as it mocks God and pretends to superiority it does not deserve.)
The term “poetaster” itself signals the speaker’s purpose: it is not merely a label for bad poetry but for imitation without substance. The speaker approaches the subject with sharpened disdain, defending the integrity of poetry against those who dilute it.
The language throughout is deliberately coarse—“windbag,” “bilge & blather,” “cesspool”—so that the revulsion is tangible. This discourse has no intention of remaining a polite literary critique; it is exposure. At the same time, the imagery is controlled, each metaphor reinforcing the disorder and emptiness that define the poetaster’s work.
First Stanza: Inherent Failure
The speaker opens by asserting that the poetaster’s failure precedes even the act of writing: “His poetry sucked long before he wrote one line.” The hyperbole suggests that the deficiency is fundamental, not merely technical.
The description “Rorschach gibberish, a kite loose in the wind” emphasizes randomness and lack of control. A Rorschach blot invites projection rather than meaning, while the loose kite suggests motion without direction. These images mark the poetaster as untethered, someone whose language drifts without intention.
Second Stanza: Abuse of Language
Here, the speaker focuses on the poetaster’s relationship to language. The phrases “bilge & blather” and “prosy, broken lines” highlight excess without purpose, the superficial adoption of form without discipline.
The simile “like a broken record swimming in a thesaurus cesspool” underscores repetition, artificiality, and overreliance on inflated diction. The poetaster does not shape language; he wallows in it. The speaker intends to convey that such writing actively degrades the medium it purports to serve.
Third Stanza: Rejection of Meaning
The third stanza identifies the poetaster’s central flaw: a willful rejection of meaning. “Meaning is a four-letter word” frames clarity and coherence as constraints.
(Scenario: One imagines the poor, teenage would-be poetaster sitting in high school English class, unable to ferret out the “meaning” of a line of verse, thus becoming convinced that meaning belongs to the elite, the teacherish class alone can understand “meaning.” Meaning shmeaning, the hell with that: words, words, words—that’s all I need for my poem.)
The comparison to “hippies against the Man” introduces cultural satire, suggesting reflexive rebellion without depth. The poetaster mistakes the absence of structure for freedom. The speaker implies that true poetry wrestles with meaning, whereas the poetaster abdicates it. Meaning—also one of the great necessities for living a decent life on this mud ball of a planet. To abdicate it is to abdicate life itself!
Fourth Stanza: Envy of the Canon
The speaker turns to the poetaster’s relation to literary tradition. “Dead poets scald him in their perfection” conveys both intimidation and resentment. The poetaster cannot reconcile himself to genuine mastery. Remember that teeny-bopper, would be poet sitting in the high school class, befuddled by the Greats!
His incredulity—“That anyone could really write a poem”—reveals insecurity. If real poetry exists, his own efforts are exposed as inadequate. Rather than aspiring to that standard, he dismisses it. Envy here becomes corrosive, curdling into denial rather than inspiring growth.
Fifth Stanza: Manipulation and Audience
The critique expands to include the poetaster’s audience. The “shyster ways” and “blistering ego trips” indicate a performative dimension: this performance is opportunism, not craft.
The poetaster relies on “the gullible who never have cared / To understand or appreciate what poetry is.” The speaker thus implicates the audience as complicit in perpetuating mediocrity. The poetaster survives not only through ego but through uncritical reception; he has become a sacred cow, impervious to criticism.
Sixth Stanza: Illusion of Grandeur
In the final stanza, the speaker employs imagery of spectacle and deception. “The man behind the curtain” evokes false authority, manipulating appearances to maintain influence. The reference to “yellow bricking” recalls a journey toward supposed revelation that leads instead to exposure—obvious allusion to The Wizard of Oz.
“Fanning his flame to fame” captures the poetaster’s self-promotional drive. The flame is ambition and vanity, maintained artificially rather than earned. The poem concludes without redemption: the poetaster remains what he is, sustained by ego and illusion.
An Afterthought
In “The Poetaster,” the speaker articulates a broader frustration with a cultural condition in which performance substitutes for substance and standards erode. The poem is intentionally harsh because the stakes are real: poetry, at its best, refines language, sharpens perception, deepens understanding, leading to spiritual rebirth for the human heard and mind.
When poetry is reduced to empty display, vitally essential human progress is lost.The speaker, therefore, does not merely condemn; she defends—aggressively—the possibility that poetry can and must still demand rigor, clarity, and truth.
Some Bones
Some bones stand like corn stalks
After late harvest. They bristle in the field.
They remain unclean though they look
Bleached and scrubbed.
Skeletons may hang in closets
But not these bones—the ones
That are losing themselves
As they scream and pound sand.
Some bones cry for a thinner cloak
But unlike some hearts
They have never broken themselves
Over the pain of this mud ball.
Some bones slash themselves in early spring
And cleave to youth too late in summer.
A young brain cannot pool its dreams
To yield the pith of adult philosophy.
Some bones have no star to guide errant ways.
They may stitch themselves by valves
But sense no light in the chambers
That wobble and bleed ugly passions.
Some bones keep wobbling, sputtering,
Spitting in the face of any thought
That might hold them to account
Lingering in the mud of passing time.
A Prose Commentary on My Original Poem “Some Bones”
In my poem “Some Bones,” I have created a speaker who is musing on fragmentation, arrested development, and the failure of inner cohesion, using the recurring image of bones—stripped, exposed, and stubbornly animate—as a controlling metaphor for the human condition when it is cut off from spiritual integration.
Unlike the quiet endurance of stone, bone suggests a harsher, more restless existence: something once living that refuses, even in its partial ruin, to settle into peace. Such failure epitomizes the blocked condition of generations of unhappy, prideful, and dangerous individuals who have remained strangers to themselves.
The language remains constructively physical—bones, closets, sand, mud, valves—yet it continually gesticulates toward psychological and spiritual disarray. My speaker does not offer consolation; instead, she allows the imagery to confront the reader with a kind of unresolved agitation. Where wisdom might emerge, it does so jarringly, often obstructed by immaturity, illusion, or sheer refusal.
Underlying the poem is my own sense that without a guiding metaphysical orientation—whether one names it divine light, higher consciousness, or moral clarity—the human being risks becoming disjointed, reactive, and perpetually unfinished. Such an orientation of mind has been instilled in my mindset by my blessèd Guru Paramahansa Yogananda.
First Stanza: Residue after Harvest
In the opening stanza, my speaker presents bones as remnants, likened to corn stalks left standing after harvest. This simile is intentional: what remains is not fruitful but residual, something overlooked, perhaps even abandoned. The bones “bristle,” suggesting defensiveness, a kind of posturing that masks emptiness.
Though they appear “bleached and scrubbed,” they remain “unclean.” This contradiction establishes a central tension: outward purification does not equate to inner transformation.
The bones carry a stain that cannot be washed away by exposure or time alone. I wanted the speaker to imply that mere survival or endurance does not guarantee wisdom; one can persist and yet remain fundamentally unresolved.
Second Stanza: Refusal of Containment
Here, my speaker contrasts the familiar idiom of “skeletons in closets” with these bones, which refuse concealment. They are not hidden but actively “losing themselves / As they scream and pound sand.” The image is specifically chaotic and futile—pounding sand accomplishes nothing, yet it expresses frustration and desperation.
These bones are not passive relics but disintegrating agents, unable to maintain coherence. The phrase “losing themselves” suggests a failure of identity, a dissolution rather than a stable essence. The speaker is emphasizing a kind of existential noise: movement without direction, expression without meaning—a condition that will remind my readers of the influence of postmodernism on poetry.
Third Stanza: Avoidance of True Suffering
In this stanza, the bones “cry for a thinner cloak,” desiring relief or escape, yet my speaker contrasts them with hearts that have “broken themselves / Over the pain of this mud ball.” The implication is that these bones have avoided the kind of deep suffering that refines and transforms.
There is, in my view, a necessary breaking that accompanies genuine emotional or spiritual growth. These bones, however, remain intact in a superficial sense precisely because they have not undergone that process.
Their complaint is shallow; they seek comfort without having earned insight. The “mud ball” underscores the earth’s dirty imperfection, a condition that must be confronted rather than evaded.
Fourth Stanza: Temporal Dislocation and Immaturity
The fourth stanza examines the misalignment of time and development. The bones “slash themselves in early spring” and “cleave to youth too late in summer,” suggesting a disordered relationship to life’s natural phases. There is both premature self-harm and delayed attachment to youth.
The concluding line suggests frenetically what the imagery implies: maturity requires synthesis. Dreams alone, without discipline or time, cannot produce wisdom. I wanted the speaker to assert that intellectual and spiritual depth cannot be rushed or improvised; it must be cultivated through experience and reflection.
Fifth Stanza: Absence of Guiding Light
Here, my speaker turns sternly to the absence of direction. The image that “Some bones have no star to guide errant ways” invokes the ancient image of navigation by the heavens. Without such a reference point, these bones attempt a kind of self-repair—“stitch themselves by valves”—but the effort is mechanical and insufficient.
The “chambers” evoke both the heart and the mind, yet they “sense no light.” This lack is crucial: the structure exists, but illumination does not. The result is a system that “wobbles and bleed[s] ugly passions,” governed not by clarity but by disorder. The speaker is averring that without an orienting principle, human faculties become unstable, even grotesque.
Sixth Stanza: Defiance and Stagnation
In the final stanza, the bones persist in their agitation—“wobbling, sputtering”—but now their resistance is directed against accountability itself. They reject introspection or discipline.
The closing image, “Lingering in the mud of passing time,” echoes to the earlier “mud ball,” but now it emphasizes stagnation. Time moves, yet the bones do not progress; they remain mired, neither decaying fully nor transforming.
This eventuality is, perhaps, the most severe judgment in the poem: not suffering, not even failure, but refusal—the unwillingness to engage the very processes that might lead to growth.
An Afterthought
In “Some Bones,” I have attempted to portray a condition of partial existence—one in which the human being retains structure and motion but lacks integration, direction, and illumination. The bones are not dead, but neither are they fully alive in any meaningful sense.
Where my earlier musing on stone suggested endurance and the possibility of quiet wisdom, here I explore a more troubled state: persistence without purpose, animation without coherence.
The poem ultimately argues, though indirectly, that without a willingness to suffer, to mature, and to orient oneself toward a higher principle, one risks becoming like these bones—restless, exposed, and perpetually incomplete.
A Memory of a Mind
for a respected professor
My heat runs near my heart
Gathering blooms like daylilies
In the staunch atmosphere of breath.
Somewhere a mockingbird is plying
His abundant score of tunes.
I listen, an ocean far away washes in.
My childish wisdom plays dark tones
Where no one bothers to intrude.
I have created my shelter with roses
& sweet notions that cling to my ears.
Summer strives with more sunshine
Than evil dares to counter.
My thoughts flow down river
Swaying like tulips in a spring breeze.
You offered me balm from the blight
Of crooked logic that streams from ignorance.
Coiffed rhetoric pours acid on tumors
Growing in idle, pampered brains.
You played your role imperfectly,
But I benefited from the jazzed up wisdom
Slipping out from your tangled sentences.
Now that you cohabit with a confuddled communist,
Her codswallop will stunt your mental growth—
Still your mind will one day bask in freedom.
A Prose Commentary on My Original Poem “A Memory of a Mind”
In my poem “A Memory of a Mind,” I fashion a speaker who reflects upon intellectual formation, gratitude, disillusionment, and the fragile persistence of independent thought. The poem operates as both tribute and critique, addressed to a once-respected mentor whose influence remains formative, though not untroubled.
I rely on organic and musical imagery—flowers, rivers, birdsong, jazz—to explore the shaping of consciousness, while also introducing harsher, almost corrosive metaphors to examine the distortions of thought imposed by ideology and careless reasoning.
The speaker’s voice is at once reflective and evaluative, moving between reverence and judgment. As in an earlier poem “Downstream,” I favor a density of figurative language that merges the sensory with the intellectual: breath becomes atmosphere, thought becomes landscape, and rhetoric becomes a physical toxin.
The philosophical undercurrent remains concerned with the tension between clarity and confusion, wisdom and corruption, freedom and constraint—an interior drama enacted within the evolving mind.
As I usually do in my poems and other creative works, I remain aware of the pairs of opposites, discussed and explained by my blessed Guru, Paramahansa Yogananda. The tension between those pairs is always operative on this mud ball of planet, and my speakers are steeped in that realization.
First Stanza: Awakening Sensibility and the Music of Distance
The opening stanza situates the speaker in a state of heightened inward awareness. “My heat runs near my heart” suggests both vitality and emotional immediacy, while the blooming “daylilies” evoke transient beauty—fleeting but recurrent. The “staunch atmosphere of breath” implies a disciplined, almost meditative interiority, where even respiration becomes deliberate and meaningful.
The introduction of the mockingbird, “plying / His abundant score of tunes,” extends the poem into the auditory realm. This figure embodies both natural creativity and excess—an improvisational intelligence that parallels the workings of the mind.
Yet the speaker does not fully inhabit this immediacy; instead, “an ocean far away washes in.” This distance signals a dual consciousness: one part present and attentive, another removed, reflective, and expansive.
Thus the stanza establishes the central dynamic of the poem: the mind as both participant in and observer of experience, capable of intimacy yet inclined toward detachment.
Second Stanza: The Construction of Inner Refuge
In the second stanza, the speaker turns inward more deliberately, recalling a “childish wisdom” that “plays dark tones / Where no one bothers to intrude.” This phrase captures an early intellectual solitude—an imaginative space untested by external critique but rich with private meaning. The darkness here is not wholly negative; it suggests depth, secrecy, and the unrefined beginnings of thought.
The “shelter with roses & sweet notions” represents a self-fashioned sanctuary, built from aesthetic pleasure and comforting ideas. Yet there is an implicit fragility in such construction: roses, while beautiful, are perishable, and “sweet notions” may lack rigor.
The stanza’s closing lines—“Summer strives with more sunshine / Than evil dares to counter”—introduce a provisional optimism, where light appears to dominate darkness. Still, the phrasing (“strives”) hints that this balance is not guaranteed; it must be maintained against encroaching forces.
Here, I am acknowledging the formative illusions of youth: necessary, perhaps, but ultimately insufficient when confronted with more complex realities. A corrupted adulthood often confounds the complexities that later snap and struggle in the confusion of time as it relates to space.
Third Stanza: Intellectual Guidance and the Critique of Corruption
The third stanza marks a turning point, introducing the addressed figure more directly. The speaker’s thoughts “flow down river,” suggesting maturation—movement shaped by gravity and terrain rather than mere whim. The comparison to “tulips in a spring breeze” retains a softness, but now this motion is guided.
“You offered me balm from the blight / Of crooked logic that streams from ignorance” positions the mentor as a corrective force. The metaphor of “balm” implies healing, while “blight” evokes disease spreading through faulty reasoning. At this stage, the professor represents clarity, a defense against intellectual decay and kuuntzian* buffoonery .
However, the stanza quickly darkens: “Coiffed rhetoric pours acid on tumors / Growing in idle, pampered brains.” The imagery becomes aggressive and surgical.
“Coiffed rhetoric” suggests language that is polished but superficial, while the “acid” both destroys and reveals. The “tumors” symbolize entrenched ignorance, particularly in minds that are “idle” and “pampered”—unused to discipline or challenge.
This stanza thus captures a dual process: the possibility of intellectual healing through guidance, and the simultaneous presence of corrosive discourse that threatens genuine understanding.
Fourth Stanza: Imperfect Influence and the Persistence of Hope
In the final stanza, the speaker adopts a more measured, retrospective tone. “You played your role imperfectly” acknowledges the mentor’s limitations, rejecting any idealization. Yet this imperfection does not negate value: “I benefited from the jazzed up wisdom / Slipping out from your tangled sentences.”
The metaphor of jazz is crucial here—improvised, irregular, sometimes chaotic, yet capable of producing unexpected insight. Wisdom emerges not from pristine clarity but from complexity, even confusion.
The poem then introduces a note of critique bordering on satire: “Now that you cohabit with a confuddled communist, / Her codswallop will stunt your mental growth.” The language is deliberately sharp, even colloquial, signaling the speaker’s frustration with what is perceived as ideological distortion. The shift in tone underscores a loss—not only of the mentor’s intellectual independence but of the clarity once admired.
Yet the poem does not conclude in bitterness. “Still your mind will one day bask in freedom” restores a measure of hope. The speaker ultimately affirms the possibility of intellectual liberation, even after error or misalignment.
This closing gesture aligns with the broader philosophical stance evident throughout the poem: that the mind, though vulnerable to confusion and influence, retains an inherent capacity for renewal and clarity.
A Closing Reflection
In “A Memory of a Mind,” I attempt to trace the evolution of consciousness as it moves from youthful inwardness, through formative mentorship, into a more critical and autonomous stance. The poem resists both naïve reverence and outright condemnation; instead, it holds both gratitude and disappointment in tension.
The central belief underlying this work is that intellectual and spiritual growth are inseparable from conflict—between clarity and confusion, influence and independence, admiration and discernment. The mind, like a river or a piece of music, is never static. It is shaped by forces both internal and external, yet it retains the capacity to reorient itself toward truth.
In this sense, the poem affirms a disciplined optimism: that even amid imperfect guidance and ideological distortion, the individual consciousness can, with effort and discernment, return to a state of freedom.
*kuuntzian: a perennially flawed, shadowy, malevolent mindset (I coined this term prompted by the pathetic machinations of a Ball State University professor, whom I hope to save from embarrassment by not spelling out his name)
Linda's Literary Home 