April happens to be National Poetry Month, so I decided to share a little something that not everyone knows about me. I used to write poems. Back when I was an angst-ridden teenager, I wrote quite a few.
Now I'm married with children and I don't write nearly as much as I should. But I still love poetry. My favorites are e.e. cummings and Alfred Tennyson. Very different writing styles, but both beautiful examples of the craft. If you haven't read either one, please check them out. I can give recommendations of some of their works, if you're interested.
I feel like poetry is really underappreciated these days. Years ago, pretty much everyone wrote poems, but now novels are the big thing. There are some websites out there that encourage writing poetry. I've read some pretty good stuff on Wattpad, which mostly features younger authors. Anything that encourages young people to write, I'm a fan of.
When I first started out, I wrote straight rhyming poems, but after I discovered e.e. cummings, I realized that poetry really doesn't have any rules. It doesn't matter about your punctuation or your grammar or sentence structure or anything like that. You just write what you feel, from your heart, and you can create beautiful things. It's a good way to work out frustrations, sadness, express your happiness. Poetry can help you to say things that you wouldn't be able to otherwise.
Here's a poem I wrote about twelve years ago, for your reading pleasure. It's called Sweet Despair.
I look for respite from my sweet despair
A means of relief
A way to purge this pain
This horror at what I've done that blankets me,
The shroud of blackness I have cast upon my life
Can anything save me from my own heart?
If there exists a way to cleanse my soul of this disgrace,
I will leave no penance undone
However great the cost
Tears are not enough to soothe this wound
Pain upon pain is what I deserve,
But my coward self will not see me through
I weaken, I fall, yet I never let go
Tight on the edge of the world I hang
I scream and I fight, I can't seem to give
I walk through the fire
But I live
Whew, see what I mean by being angst-ridden? What about you? Have you ever dabbled in poetry? Do you just like reading it?
That's a great poem, wow! You did seem a little down but we all know great writers express there true feelings and that's what makes us able to relate because of the honesty, it's beautiful, thank you for sharing.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Rachael! A lot of my poems have that same feeling, but that's what I love about poetry, it allows you to express yourself more than any other form of writing.
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