Post 1- Isaac Satin

“Do You Have Any Advice For Those of Us Just Starting Out?"

Ron Koertge

Give up sitting dutifully at your desk. Leave

your house or apartment. Go out into the world.

It's all right to carry a notebook but a cheap

one is best, with pages the color of weak tea

and on the front a kitten or a space ship.

Avoid any enclosed space where more than

three people are wearing turtlenecks. Beware

any snow-covered chalet with deer tracks

across the muffled tennis courts.

Not surprisingly, libraries are a good place to write.

And the perfect place in a library is near an aisle

where a child a year or two old is playing as his

mother browses the ranks of the dead.

Often he will pull books from the bottom shelf.

The title, the author's name, the brooding photo

on the flap mean nothing. Red book on black, gray

book on brown, he builds a tower. And the higher

it gets, the wider he grins.

You who asked for advice, listen: When the tower

falls, be like that child. Laugh so loud everybody

in the world frowns and says, "Shhhh."

Then start again.

 

from Fever, 2006

Red Hen Press

Copyright 2006 by Red Hen Press.

All rights reserved.

Reproduced with permission
http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/007.html

Koertge's poem reflects an absolutely universal theme. He is serving as an elder figure in the reader's journey- some may call it a right of passage; Campbell would identify the reader to be "Crossing the Threshold" into adventure in a mythological sense. No matter who calls it what, the theme of beginning- and of needing advice for a place to start- exists in every known culture. 

I chose this specific poem to write about because I was interested in the speaker's response to the question he frames in the title. I have watched many people ask this question or questions similar to it, and the responses they get always are slightly varied but also share some version of the advice "just go and do it" (which Koertge promptly covers). Beyond that, I think the question is absurd on some level- we're always "just starting out" at something. Some of these somethings are more important than others, but everyone does so many new things daily without realizing it that it's almost laughable how this sort of inquiry stays relevant. That doesn't make asking how to start out bad, though. Just alien, in an ordinary way.