Music:Annie Get Your Gun, I've got the sun in the morning and the moon at nightBeatles, Hard Day's NightMachine Gun Kelly, InvincibleMan of La Mancha, The Impossible Dream (lyrics, Joe Darion)Dedicated to Nelson Mandela*SPLENDOR IN THE CHAOS; LOVE, LOSS, AND WHAT I WORE; HOW AND WHY POETRYMATTERS*, PART TWO:THE PHYSICS AND METAPHYSICS AND THEATER OF BOUNCE, OR HOW TIGGER GOT HISPOUNCE BACK WHEN LIFE IS A BEAR BEAST CHORE HEADACHE HORROR SHOW KILLERSTICKY WICKET AND MORE, AND WHAT WE CAN LEARN ON HOW AND WHY TO BE CALM ANDCARRY ONMary Oliver on worry; Shakespeare on fear of aging; Tennyson on what to dowhen you're all washed up; Dickinson on being a nobody; Yeats on beingslowed down, Dr. B on Helpful Banana Bread, and more . . . .THERE's splendid chaos! Picnic! But we're slowing down for a sighting orrather a *hearing* worth pondering, on our hectic hurtling stirred ANDshaken journey today, for the news we need "without which men die miserablyevery day"—thank you Dr. William Carlos Williams. Yes we want to livehappily every day, to have life be a picnic, but this does not mean thereis not sorrow and stress. What about when life is NOT a picnic, defined bythe dictionary as:easy street <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/easy+street>, funand games <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fun+and+games>, hogheaven <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hog+heaven>, beer andskittles <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/beer+and+skittles> [andcakes and ale?], primrosepath<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/primrose+path>;heaven <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/heaven>,paradise<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/paradise>,utopia <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/utopia>; Americandream<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/american+dream>,good life <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/good+life>;ease<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ease>,relaxation <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/relaxation>,rest<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rest>The antonyms for picnic what's at stake when life is not so picnicy:*bear <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bear>,beast<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/beast>,chore <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chore>,headache<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/headache>,horror show <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/horror+show>,killer<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/killer>,labor <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/labor>,murder<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/murder>,pain <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pain>, stickywicket<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sticky+wicket>,stinker <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stinker> [slang]**agony <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/agony>,hell<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hell>,horror <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/horror>,misery<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/misery>,murder <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/murder>,nightmare<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nightmare>,torment <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/torment>,torture<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/torture>*On the theory that life can be a *bear, beast, chore, headache, horrorshow, killer, labor, murder, pain, sticky wicket, stinker* . . chaotic andhard and difficult and lonely, not to mention agony, misery, torment, andsad, what do we humans have in our toolkit or picnic basket?In honor of Nelson Mandela and his life struggles and endurances andinspiring prevailings, our show today will consider Gertrude Stein-like howpoetry serves us four ways in three parts: how ancient wisdom prescribespoetry as Rx for our survival; how poetry has played a role in resiliencefor people we never imagined needed any such help—great leaders who havegotten us, WE THE PEOPLE, through cataclysmic wars and depressions andcrises; poetry that helps us through hard days and hard days' nights . . .and poetry on how writing poetry can change and even save the day . . .deus ex machina . . . . as we think of Nobel Peace Prize laureate NelsonMandela today, how leaders across time are served by poetry —including notonly Mandela but Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Gandhi, Martin LutherKing, President Obama, and Theodore Roosevelt.The first thing to remember when things go wrong is the instructions at thebottom of the box of a compass our family once bought that needed to be puttogether. When we went back to the box after it didn't work, we found aNotice: "If all else fails read the directions." Aha! Instructions! Well,in cases of chaos, go back to the directions, and those directions are . .. the reading and writing and interpretation of poetry! I'm being literal.1. YOU WON'T REMEMBER THIS UNTIL YOU ARE WAY IN OVER YOUR HEAD: DON'TSAY WE DIDN'T WARN YOU: ANCIENT KNOWLEDGE ON POETRY AND LEADERSHIP.So, there once was a Sphinx, the story goes, and it's a chimerical beast,part human, part bird, part mammal--eagle, lion, and woman: a messagecrafted by ancient minds for us to understand the art and science ofbeing—an invocation to interpret our world. Skip forward a few thousandyears from the Egyptian sands, and now it's 411 B.C. and Sophocles isentering his playOedipus the King in the city's drama festival. The story goes that Oedipusis taunted on the playground as children sometimes bully each other. Hegoes crying to the local oracle holed-up in the cave office—more astrologerthan therapist--and the voice tells him instead of yes, no, up, down,you're going to marry your mother and kill your father. Oedipus wants noneo' this and he high tails it out of Dodge. He takes to the open road andheads towards Thebes. He encounters along the way a party coming the otherway. One thing leads to another and he kills them all. He arrives at thecity of Thebes, which meanwhile is being plagued with the Sphinx who playsthe role of a kind of gate keeper. In order to enter the city you have toanswer the riddle of the Sphinx, which is a poem, a metaphor: what walks onfour legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in theafternoon. The Sphinx question is kind of like a SAT test or LSAT or MCAT,and you have to pass. But this so-called monstrous creature is a strictgrader. You can't fail and just re-take the test another time or take aKaplan course or get credit for trying. No, you are throttled—which is whatthe name The Sphinx means—strangled, that is, and hurtled down the cliff.And so far in the story, no one has been able to answer the riddle, sobodies are piling up at the bottom of the cliff and no one is getting intoThebes. So Oedipus shows us, and Oedipus answers the riddle! It is "man,"the human experience of being an infant crawling on all fours at thebeginning of our day—the metaphor is that our life is a day, marked by thepassage of the sun; we are walking astride on two legs albeit with Advil inthe noon, the peak of our lives, and in the afternoon of our lives, we areon three legs, supported by a cane. You would think that the humanexperience which we ALL experience would be recognized through the riddleby all the people wanting to get into Thebes. Perhaps the message is thatpoetry is not easy.But if you don't read and understand a poetic way of thinking and speaking,you not only are not fit to live WITH others, in the community of Thebes;you are not fit to live at all. So not knowing poetry is a fatal ignorance.Such is the literacy requirement of the ancient mind.Isn't it interesting that this story of 411 BC makes poetic interpretationof our world essential for living—and leadership. Thebes is so happy thatOedipus has saved them by figuring out the metaphor riddle, causing theSphinx like Dorothy's witch in *Wizard of O*z to shrink, *I'm melting*,that they say to him, we happen to have an opening for king, our king hasgone missing, and a queen comes with this position, so there you are. Allgoes downhill for him after that, but isn't it interesting that poetry isconsidered the currency of knowledge—this way of seeing metaphorically, ofunderstanding our world and ourselves.When we are in a sticky wicket, when life is not a picnic, when we arechallenged, poetry contains a wisdom about our world and our own humanity.Abraham Lincoln, who suffered greatly as our president during the CivilWar, was immensely helped by poetry. He memorized Edgar Allen Poe's *TheRaven*, and William Cullen Bryant's *Thanatopsis*, and *A Forest Hymn*,"the groves were God's first temples" (it isn't a coincidence, methinks,that Lincoln signed The Yosemite Grant in 1864). We'll hear about the waysLincoln, Churchill, Teddy Roosevelt, and others were helped by reading andwriting poetry. We will hear a theory about the way the Sphinx, the Raven,the poem are guides on our life journeys.Then we hear poems of solace and encouragement for life's sticky wickets,the Bard on being washed out and Yeats' café revelation and The FlyWhisperer and Oliver on worry and the great Tennyson cover of The Odysseywhen being washed up is not an option, and my own Helpful Banana Bread"when all hell is breaking loose," and it's bounce back time, slowing downfor our Poetry Slow Down, the spirit that brings picnic splendor in thegrass when rain and wasps are in the picture.© Barbara Mossberg 2013
