Distillations: The Inspiration of Others

Inspiration can be a mysterious thing. However, this month we will explore three poems from Mythic Delirium #18 which spring from a specific inspiration documented in each poem. These poems are not copies of the original, but new art inspired by the old.

In “Mrs Margery Lovett, Her Book” by Gemma Files, the inspiration is a few lines from Alexander Pope which are quoted in an epigraph, “But let me flap this bug with gilded wings, / this painted child of dirt…” The poem is just over two pages and is divided into “chapters” which contain lines of verse. Pope described his poem, “Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot,” as “a Sort of Bill of Complaint.” Files’s poem has some of the same attitude and forthright style as Pope’s, “Caught with the flux, the pox, the weeping syph. / We tear each other’s flesh, like rats in traps.” There is a balancing act with poems that allude to other poems—particularly when the original poem is over 200 years old. It is important to make sure that the new poem can stand on its own without an understanding of the original. Files has succeeded in this, but also inspired me to look up Alexander Pope’s poem in order to understand it further.

Jeannine Hall Gailey’s poem, “Awaré for the Woman who Disappears in Silence,” introduces its subject in general terms with the word “awaré” and then more specifically with the subtitle, “Based on ‘The Bush Warbler’s Home’ and other stories.” At the end of the poem, Gailey provides a definition of awaré by Hayao Kawai: “softly despairing sorrow.” The story referenced in the subtitle, “The Bush Warbler’s Home,” ends with a perfect example of this sadness. It involves a woman whose children, in the form of birds, are lost when a visitor to her castle touches their eggs and lets them fly away. The mother turns into the bush warbler of the title and flies after them. Gailey retells this story in a 32-line poem that combines narrative “He drops them and hears a sorrowful cry, when / three small birds fly out a window” with imagery “the slim trunk of the green willows. Her hair falls / down her back like water.” Like the original story, it is full of a certain beautiful sadness, but it ends on a more hopeful note than the legend:

…In his dreams he marries her,
their three daughters sweep obediently.
He feeds birds with hope.

Gailey has provided her own understanding of the same story without taking away from the original.

These first two examples showed how existing literature can inspire new literature. In contrast, the creative impulse for Michael Meyerhofer’s poem was a news article. Because the article was central to his poem, he made its headline the title of his poem, “Scientists Discover Singing Iceberg in Antarctica.” The attribution “—Reuters article” is used as a subtitle. The title alone is a great example of found poetry. The phrase “singing iceberg” evokes a magic that contrasts with the traditional images of “scientists.” There is also a wonderful symmetry to the repetition of “s” and “i” sounds in “scientists” and “singing.” The final word in the title, “Antarctica,” brings forth images of a continent so remote that its inhabitants are akin to colonists of another world.

While the poem begins with the iceberg, it quickly heads in other directions, “an iceberg anchors down / and hums like a beehive.” Meyerhofer goes on to use the metaphor of an orchestra “tuning itself / in the world’s oldest concert hall.” This image takes us from the remote ice sheets to the center of the biggest cities. Next, the poem travels back in time to the Neanderthals and “the silence before / that first fiddle of hair on bone.” A poem that began with a scientific discovery has traced the breadth of mankind’s musical accomplishments.

In each of these three poems, the source of inspiration adds a layer of meaning to the new poem. Although they have borrowed inspiration from elsewhere, each poet has acknowledged their debt and paid it back with interest. These new poems would not have been possible without the previous creation of a poem, a legend, and a news article. However, neither could the creators of these inspirational pieces have written the works that follow.