There is some debate about the "greatness" of Kipling or even if he was a poet at all. Here is my own reflection in this prose-poem on Kipling.-Ron Price, Tasmania
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KIPLING: a thank you and a reflection
When Rudyard Kipling died in January 1936 and his autobiography was published the following year, the Baha’i community of North America was just beginning its first teaching Plan, 1937 to 1944 and my parents were just about to meet and, in a few years set about producing me.
This poet of British imperialism, the first English language writer and the youngest-ever recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature had died as western civilization was heating up for another big war. Some critics denied Kipling’s claim to poethood. His poetic, his literary, aim was to reach out to a very varied audience, to amuse, to entertain, to educate the sensibilities and he had done this as far back as 1892 when he began to emerge as a fully fledged poet. His observation skills, his power of imagination, his inner vision, his unpretentiousness, his idealism and sense of duty, his luminous narrative gift and genius, were all part of a life that, as he himself put it, “he played as it came.” He said his recipe for writing was: "drift, wait and obey.” As a poet, I find these words of Kipling's helpful.-Ron Price, Pioneering Over Four Epochs, 18 April 2008--updated for Cafe Poetica on 9/11/'08.
I, too, drift, wait and obey,
Rudyard, in a different time,
indeed, a different epoch, so
much has happened in those
years since the beginning of
those Plans, since your book,
your published autobiography,
saw the light of day and like
some preliminary task that
unfolded enabling generations
to come to fulfill in the course
of the succeeding century the
vision of some spiritual destiny
you hardly saw in all your work.
The empire that was your love
was not to last, as you foresaw,
Rudyard, but the evidences of
an earthly sovereignity had just
begun to be established in this
world, one that would endure
forever, would not perish from
this earth, a sovereignty that
would overshadow all peoples
of the earth enough for each
and all of us to forsake any
mortal, fleeting sovereignty,
any British imperialism, yes,
any imperialism, Rudyard!!!
Ron Price
18 April 2008
(updated on: 9/11/'08)