Wednesday, May 4, 2011
I carry 'I carry your heart with me' with me
Poetry had never been a part of my life. In fact, I might have had a slight biased against it when I was younger, I'm not sure. I did, however, read childrens poetry like Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein as a child, but who hasn't. I knew I had always loved songs with beautiful words, but I never knew how much I needed the beauty of such a common thing. That is, until worthy songs weren't being produced quick enough, and I was in dire need of solace in something. I lost my friend to cancer a couple years ago, and it was shortly after that, that I was caught hook-in-mouth by the haunting words of my first, real poem: 'I carry your heart with me' by E.E. Cummings. These beautiful, absurd words gave me the connection I needed to the loss I felt and I was beside myself with passion for this new art I'd happened upon. It's in the words "...and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant, and whatever a sun will always sing is you," that I found my most passionate love for words.
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I have written since I was a kid, always trying to come up with snazzy song lyrics or poems, but I was usually unsuccessful. When I would write “poetry” I would get extremely frustrated. When I would just write for the sake of it, it was often a liberating experience. I see now that the cause of at least part of my frustration with the poetry aspect was because I was trying to accomplish two things at once- putting original feelings down and editing at the same time. When writing poetry, I never wanted my pen to write anything that wasn’t in final form. I would come up with a crafty stanza or two but my poems usually never reached completion, probably due to the exhaustion this takes. This course has taught me that its ok that it doesn’t come out perfect the first time, that the first draft is not supposed to make complete sense or to be taken as that. I was trying to accomplish too much. Now, I see writing poetry as at least a two-step process; letting the muse flow from its inspiration, and then noticing themes or vivid ideas, and focusing on a central theme for clarification. I say at least a two-step process because I bet that I will look over some of the poems I have written this semester, perhaps a few months from now, with a fresh eye and fine tune them.
ReplyDeleteI see now that, in fact, the majority of my writing has actually BEEN muse writing. It’s always been a good form of venting excitement, anxiety or otherwise. So now when I write poetry, I will borrow from my muse, giving it more reign and flexibility, then I will revise with my logical eye and look for organization, and use of poetry language to use.