Inspiration comes from strange places.
In this case, it came from an ad for quests (aka escape rooms) in Novosibirsk. I love this ad (which is actually a placemat at a local cafe) because it’s laid out as a humorous flow chart designed to help you find the perfect quest. In one part (shown below), it asks, “Are you Napoleon?”
If you answer yes, it recommends ПСИХБОЛЬНИЦА — the “Psych Ward.”
Well. I’ve recently started writing over lunch at this very cafe, and it just so happened that one day, when I looked at the next theme on the list, it was —
INSANITY
Bingo. That’s how I got the first few lines.
From that rather ridiculous starting point, the poem spiraled into something far more serious in tone. As I wrote, my imagination started throwing around allusions to other great defeats and disasters until the poem lost its initial unity and began to feel very much like actual raving.
I’ve left that impression more or less intact. In fact, I’ve amplified it through revisions. So if you’re wondering why the verses jump from one image to another and leave you with poetic whiplash, that’s why.
Maybe it’s not the best technique — but it’s an experiment.
Anyway, here are the results!
(For non-German speakers, it may help you to be familiar with the song “Gretchen am Spinnrade,” which is quoted in the poem.)
Self-Portrait, Spinning
Mine is not the insanity that marches, muttering
of Waterloo. It huddles in the heart’s high tower
weaving visions of sunlight scattered in mirrors.
My foot taps its spinster-song march to someday-glory,
tap-tap as wheel and loom hum refrains to the song
in endless round muttered—meine Ruh’ ist hin
ist hin ist hin
—and the round resounds in light reflected, refracted
and shattered in shards all congratulating, confirming
one another until they fold on the loom’s horizon
to rise again, another false day. Unsinkable.
Iceberg warning ahead; full speed, I spin.
Mine is the insanity that weathers: strap me, and I grow stronger
with every squirming feat of resistance required to believe.
The city’s unsinkable, founded on patterns and perseverance,
repetitive runs carving ruts into time. Longer than Troy it’s stood
against you: it demands a subtler horse.
But the queen overthrown from within
invites invasion.
Come, bring your horses and cannons, your icepicks and axes,
for I invite defeat—true night in exchange for true day.
With the left side of my mouth I invite you: steal my light,
steal my gold, steal the straw I’ve hoarded, hoping
some alchemy of the heart might spin something real.
Then I’ll wake and weave a new banner, singing hymns
of a humiliating dawn, where we have lost
what we haven’t loved, where we now love
what we cannot lose. The tower of the loom sinks blue
beneath the waves; the sun waits there, a second shore.
From here, the iceberg looms.
As usual, I invite you to share your own thoughts (and perhaps your own verses) in the comments below. Where’s the last place you got an odd inspiration for your work?
Wow! I totally was moved by this poem – and it riveted within me as if it were from my distant past. I embraced it. Thanks for sharing – and remember, insanity is not always a bad state of mind. Sometimes it allows us to survive.
Awesome! I’m glad (I think?) that it resonated somehow.
As for insanity — I think delusions, being by nature opposite to truth and resistant to it, can’t be good. But if we’re talking about being a little loco in the eyes of the world, well … 🙂