Finding Your Inner Poetry Hat {Loren Goodman}

SEOUL, Korea -- October 20

(Photo by Maciej Gryzbowski)

If there's one thing I want to do this week, it's find my inner poetry hat. Not that I haven't been searching. For months all I can find is this one:

(Before)

Nice hat, sure. But I've worn it so much it's crusty. Salt-stained. Every time I put it on it's only a matter of seconds before my scalp starts to itch.

I keep looking at myself in the photo above, then the one of Sung Kee below:

(Photo by Maciej Gryzbowski)

No doubt about it: finding your inner poetry hat can make all the difference.

While cleaning my desk, I find this stack:

One discovery leads to another
Now I’ve got a bunch of hats

But which is right for me?

Sometimes it’s not a matter of looking outside

Be still, and upon your head your hat may materialize

You know it might have been there all along

Sung Kee Revisited

LG: You look slimmed down!

SM: Actually, I gained weight.

Thanks for the food!

LG: My pleasure. There's steak ones too. Try a steak one.

Bianca: We ordered pizza.

Hamdan: You like tomatoes?

LG: Have some of the salad.

SM: I don't have a fork.

Bianca: Here, put dressing on it.

Hamdan: Dressing? No! Better without it.

Bianca: Are you kidding? This dressing is so good!

LG: What’s your average day like?

SM: Wake up at six, eat, and clean. Then have lunch, and go downstairs and check all the wires and connections on the communication units, cause I specialize in radio. Then clean.

Maciej: It's heavy, isn't it?

SM: Yeah--

Konrad: Like 20 kilos--

LG: What about after dinner?

SM: Study my radio stuff, and clean. We do a lot of cleaning.

Hamdan: H-Here?

SM: Yeah--I know.

LG: What happened to your finger?

SM: It … got broken.

LG: Do you have any free time?

SM: Yes.

LG: What do you do?

SM: I don't know, at my rank I can’t even read books.

Maciej: Are you able to watch TV?

SM: There’s TV, but I’m not allowed to watch it. I’ll be able to watch it when I move up in rank… about five or six months.

LG: So what can you do on your free time?

SM: I can sit and stare at the wall. Up straight. In one month I’ll be allowed to actually lean back against the wall while I sit.

It’s funny. During school, I had all this reading to do, and I didn’t do much of it. Now, I’m not allowed to have books, and all I want to do is read.

LG: Are you allowed to write?

SM: Yes.

LG: Have you written any poems?

SM: I did. I wrote some. But they kept getting shorter and shorter, until they just stopped.

Konrad: You could write one-word poems.

LG: Can you write letters?

SM: Yes.

LG: I want you to send me a poem every week.

SM: Oh-kay.

Two years. You’re supposed to come out of here changed—a stronger person. But I don’t think I want to be that person.

Hamdan: Seven minutes left.

LG: When’s the next time you can have visitors?

SM: In a month.

All: We’ll come see you then!

(Left to right, back row: Bianca's boyfriend (sorry, forgot his name!), Bianca, Konrad, Maciej, Loren. Front row: Hamdan, Sung Kee. Photo by Maciej Gryzbowski )

Caps for Sale

But which is right for me?

(Prizes will be awarded to those who can identify the most authors of the following lines)

1. Kobe University Poetry Hat:

2. Green Trucker Poetry Hat:

"I schal telle hit as-tit, as I in toun herde,/with tongue,/As hit is stad and stoken/In stori stif and stronge,/With lel letters loken,/In londe so hatz ben longe."

3. Cowboy Poetry Hat:

"Just what is cowboy poetry/I've many times been asked,/Why might a cowboy start to write/And will that writing last"

4. Brazilian Poetry Hat:

". . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . ! . .

. . ! . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . !"

5. Desert Storm Poetry Hat:

"In the Desert of the heart,/Let the healing start;/In the prison of his days,/Teach the free man to praise."

6. Black Gold Poetry Hat:

"Kill my style/and you break Pavlowa's legs,/and you blind Ty Cobb's batting eye."

7. Poetry Skullcap:

"It is a tree of life to those who take hold of it/and all those who hold on to it are happy"

8. Basque Poetry Hat:

"The moon is bright, but not as bright as the sun."

9. Charger Poetry Hat:

The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them;/They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,/And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the Soul."

10. Modified Poetry Fez:

"Last night, your lost memories crept into my heart/as spring arrives secretly into a barren garden/as a cool morning breeze blows slowly in a desert/as a sick person feels well, for no reason."

11. Nordic Poetry Hat:

"It is still beautiful to hear the heart beat/but often the shadow seems more real than the body."

12. Roger Federer Poetry Hat:

"What had you been thinking about/the face studiously bloodied/heaven blotted region/I go on loving you like water but/there is a terrible breath in the way all of this/You were not elected president, yet won the race"

13. Ian Thorpe Poetry Hat: