Tricia Leong ASA 002 A03 Week 10

"March 3, 2014, Minneapolis, His Holiness Held My Hand to His Heart" by W.P. was probably the poem I liked most of all, and it is the perfect poem for the book's conclusion. It serves as a reminder at the end of the book that while the tower is something that should be fought, we must fight with love rather than with hatred and violence. The speaker says "I've tried to calm a storm with a storm / I've tried to soothe anger with anger" and ended up "A shattered soul between your palms,," indicating that violence only leads to more suffering.  Instead, we must be "...a mole burrowing a tunnel of love under the alabaster tower."

The second half of the poem reminds readers to keep fighting and never give up, no matter how impossible it may seem. It serves as a call to action a source of motivation, while also offering a glimmer of hope through positive imagery. Once the tower is down, W.P. says we must not rebuild it with the same grudges and resentment with which it was originally created; rather, we must, as the title of the section (Kintsuki) suggests, "repair with gold." The note at the end of the poem suggests that the breakage of the tower must not be hidden, but instead should be highlighted so we never forget what it has been through. We can never forget what has happened, but learn from it and make it even better. After all, the bowl, as shown in the picture below, looks less boring and more unique with the gold cracks. The challenges we face and obstacles we overcome are eventually what make the final product even more beautiful and valuable. The question is, how to we implement this repair method into real life? After all, a tower is much more difficult to repair- let alone tear down in the first place- than a simple bowl.

References

W.P. (2014). "March 3, 2014, Minneapolis, His Holiness Held My Hand to His Heart". Fight the Tower (pp. 419-420). Rutgers University Press.

Mantonvani, A. (2019, September 19). "Kintsugi and the Art of Repair: life is what makes us." Retrieved from https://medium.com/@andreamantovani/kintsugi-and-the-art-of-repair-life-is-what-makes-us-b4af13a39921.