Smart Poem Gets it Right

Sometimes poems say everything and get it exactly right. After a long discussion yesterday with someone who believed that the only things schools should teach is “what you need to do in life,” I realized how awful that would be.

Most of what I do today didn’t exist when I was in school. I certainly did not study how to handle communication problems in the workplace while in college. I learned that from making communication mistakes in the workplace.

When I was in college, there were no blogs, no Twitter and no websites. There were no computers, cell phones, or faxes. (Yes, that was a long time ago.)

What I still use today is the problem solving I learned. How to think, not what to think. And, of course, that art is the benchmark of a culture. And I’m still using all that knowledge, years later. This poem knows so much I can still learn.

You and Art

Your exact errors make a music

that nobody hears.

Your straying feet find the great dance,

walking alone.

And you live on a world where stumbling

always leads home.

Year after year fits over your face—

when there was youth, your talent

was youth;

later, you find your way by touch

where moss redeems the stone;

and you discover where music begins

before it makes any sound,

far in the mountains where canyons go

still as the always-falling, ever-new flakes of snow.

—William Stafford, from You Must Revise Your Life

–Quinn McDonald reads poetry to learn about life.

Filed under: Coaching, In My Life, The Writing Life Tagged: creativity coaching, poem, poetry, william stafford