Mr. H. Salsich
9 English
June 4, 2009
Finding a Place:
An Essay on a Poem, a Poet, and Sonny
What do you have to do to find your place in the world? Do you have to overcome obstacles, or is your fate right in front of you, waiting for you to see it? Either way, finding your calling is not an easy task. In his poem “The Real Work,” Wendell Berry describes the fact that you may have to make an effort to find your place, a lesson that both Rainer Maria Rilke and Sonny are aware of.
“The Real Work,” by Wendell Berry only consists of six lines, but within this short poem, you can find many life lessons. The first half of this poem talks about finding your calling. When you are always looking for answers, you may dismiss something you have had all along. If we put aside this search, “we no longer know what to do,” and with this blessed ignorance, “we have come to our real work.” The last two lines of this poem, in which Berry states “the mind that is not baffled is not employed. / The impeded streams is the one that sings,” remind me of a Native American proverb I have seen in Mr. Williams’ classroom. The proverb says that “the soul would have no rainbow if the eyes had no tears,” meaning that to become a better person, you must overcome adversity (Loose Sentence). You may suffer in this process, but you will come out a stronger and wiser person than you were before. Occasionally, all you need to do to improve your life is to take stock of what you have and fight for what you deserve (purposeful repetition).
This poem reminds me of two people we studied at the very beginning of the year: Sonny, from James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues,” and Rainer Maria Rilke. In our first essay assignment, we wrote about a passage by Rilke, which told readers not to “search for the answers” you already have. Like Wendell Berry, Rilke is encouraging readers to let the answers come to them instead of spending all their time looking for them. If you are always searching for the answers, you may miss the ones that were sitting in front of you the entire time. A significant connection this poem has with “Sonny’s Blues” is the last line: “the impeded stream is the one that sings.” Sonny had a rough patch in life, dealing with drugs and life as a musician (participle), which culminated in his incarceration (FAST). When Sonny finally got clean, he was able to use all of what he went through in his music, contributing such raw emotion to his performances. Sonny did some terrible things, but when he stopped looking for a way to fit in, he found his place.
Nothing in life is free, but this doesn’t mean that we should spend our lives searching for answers we will never find. Life may throw obstacles at us, but it is up to us to rise above it all and change for the better. Yes, life can be tough, but this is no reason to give up our right to live. Keep fighting, and always remember to acknowledge what you already have.
No comments:
Post a Comment