{"id":1,"date":"2024-06-30T17:41:24","date_gmt":"2024-06-30T17:41:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/debbiebacharach\/?p=1"},"modified":"2025-06-13T20:02:41","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T20:02:41","slug":"i-said-to-the-wanting-creature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/debbiebacharach\/i-said-to-the-wanting-creature\/","title":{"rendered":"I Said to the Wanting Creature"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

I Said to the Wanting Creature<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

I said to the wanting-creature inside me:
What is this river you want to cross?
There are no travelers on the river-road, and no road.
Do you see anyone moving about on that bank, or nesting?
There is no river at all, and no boat, and no boatman.
There is no tow rope either, and no one to pull it.
There is no ground, no sky, no time, no bank, no ford!<\/p>\r\n

And there is nobody, and no mind!
Do you believe there is some place that will make the
soul less thirsty?
In that great absence, you will find nothing.<\/p>\r\n

Be strong then, and enter into your own body;
there you have a solid place for your feet.
Think about it carefully!
Don\u2019t go off somewhere else!<\/p>\r\n

Kabir says this: just throw away all thoughts of imaginary
things, and stand firm in that which you are.<\/p>\r\n

\u00a0<\/em>Kabir (trans Robert Bly)<\/p>\r\n

\u00a0what it means<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

The speaker addresses the part of himself that wants\/desires\/craves. He says to that part that there is no place \u201cwhere the soul is less thirsty\u201d: there\u2019s no place where those cravings will go away. Instead of trying to rush off to a better place, know yourself and be content.<\/p>\r\n

\u00a0why I like the poem <\/strong><\/p>\r\n

\u00a0<\/strong>I find the tone of this poem delightful. The speaker chastises himself while being full of wonder. Normally, I\u2019m not a fan of exclamation points, but here the speaker just feels so full of wow! wow! that I didn\u2019t mind them.<\/p>\r\n

\u00a0craft<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

\u00a0This is one of the poems that Dia and I picked for our epiphanic article, so here\u2019s a preview of what we\u2019ll be talking about. This poem follows the five-step model we uncovered for making a powerful poem that centers around an epiphany.<\/p>\r\n

Step 1: ground the speaker in the real world<\/em><\/p>\r\n

\u00a0\u201cThere are no travelers on the river-road, and no road.<\/p>\r\n

Do you see anyone moving about on that bank, or nesting?\u201d<\/p>\r\n

\u00a0All of this happens in a real word of rivers, roads, banks, nesting birds.<\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

Step 2: Make a bridge into a whirl<\/em><\/p>\r\n

\u201cWhat is this river you want to cross?\u201d<\/p>\r\n

In this case, he literally uses the word \u201ccross.\u201d It\u2019s a literal crossing, but it\u2019s also a crossing between states of mind, moving to an out-of-body\/out of mind experience.<\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

Step 3: The whirl<\/em><\/p>\r\n

\u00a0\u201cThere is no river at all, and no boat, and no boatman.
<\/em>There is no tow rope either, and no one to pull it.
<\/em>There is no ground, no sky, no time, no bank, no ford!<\/p>\r\n

And there is nobody, and no mind!\u201d<\/p>\r\n

In this whirl, the entire real world has been erased as well as the body and the mind. We are gone, gone, gone.<\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

Step 4: The epiphany<\/em><\/p>\r\n

\u00a0\u201cDo you believe there is some place that will make the
<\/em>soul less thirsty?
<\/em>In that great absence, you will find nothing.<\/p>\r\n

Be strong then, and enter into your own body;
<\/em>there you have a solid place for your feet.
<\/em>Think about it carefully!
<\/em>Don\u2019t go off somewhere else!\u201d<\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

This is what the speaker has now realized: There is no better place. You\u2019ve got make it work right here.<\/p>\r\n

\u00a0Step 5: Return to the everyday<\/em><\/p>\r\n

\u00a0\u201cKabir says this: just throw away all thoughts of imaginary
<\/em>things, and stand firm in that which you are.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

Suddenly another voice enters the poem. It\u2019s like someone has been observing the speaker all this time and now speaks up. The speaker is no longer alone in the ungrounded land of epiphany.<\/p>\r\n

Stay tuned for all the methods we discovered for these 5 steps.<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I Said to the Wanting Creature I said to the wanting-creature inside me:What is this river you want to cross?There are no travelers on the river-road, and no road.Do you see anyone moving about on that bank, or nesting?There is no river at all, and no boat, and no boatman.There is no tow rope either,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poem-reviews","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/debbiebacharach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/debbiebacharach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/debbiebacharach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/debbiebacharach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/debbiebacharach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/debbiebacharach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":242,"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/debbiebacharach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions\/242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/debbiebacharach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/debbiebacharach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/debbiebacharach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}