An Esthetic Exodus

If you had a magic lamp,
What would your last wish be?
Would you wish for endless wishes,
Or would you set the genie free?
If life were all a fairy tale,
Would it really end happily ever after?
If the world were devoid of all sadness,
Would we appreciate the value of laughter?
If nobody ever made a mistake,
How would we know what not to do?
If you were me and I were you,
Would you make the same decisions I do?
Throughout the rest of our lives,
Through the laughter, the sadness and joy,
Though the answer we know not,
We’ll always ask what if. . .?

The above was the first poem I ever finished. I was 16 when I submitted it to Poetry.Com. As with every poet entered in their contests, I was published in one of their anthologies. I now realize this was arbitrary and hardly worth the excitement it elicited. Nevertheless, I was thrilled. I (or rather my parents) shelled out the $50 to buy the book (which now collects dust in my room).  My poem had been published and would be seen by other people. This thought inspired me, and I submitted many more poems to that site, (but my parents wouldn’t buy any more books).  And so my love affair with poetry began.

As an adolescent I drowned in poetry. The angst-ridden, emotionally driven, hearkens-back-to-a-pop-song-I-heard-once poetry that every adolescent with the slightest verbal leaning turns to in times of hormonal chaos. I ate it for breakfast, took it with me everywhere I went, and slept with it at night. It became my avenue of expression, an escape for my emotions, thoughts, and experiences. I learned that broken hearts make the best poets, churning out 3 to 4 poems a day after my first break-up (I also discovered the poetic advantage of being the dumpee). Unrequited love provided yet another fount of inspiration and an artistic outpouring. My favorite form during this renaissance was a rhyming couplet in iambic pentameter (think Shakespeare), although I often varied my structure to keep things “interesting”. Eventually I grew weary of my style and began searching for new inspiration.

So I read poets. I read Rilke, Neruda, Roethke, Poe, any many others. I started writing free-form poetry, and let my soul spill out onto the page from a spring of emotional wounds and grievances. The downfall of these poems is that they don’t mean anything to the reader, and often don’t make any sense to anyone but myself. Once I grew out of my adolescence I began writing poems about nature, objects, places, experiences. I experimented with different styles, played around with the language (the thesaurus was my best friend), and allowed myself to say the things I hadn’t dared to before. Looking back I wouldn’t call any of them publishable, but I still enjoy reading them.

I experienced a creative drought when I “met someone”, which is a common metaphor for “fell in love.” It’s interesting how writing about emotions, especially love, becomes so much easier when you’re not feeling them (unless it’s anger, resentment, grief, loss, sadness, you get the idea). I forced a few gooshy ones to fruition, but not much else.

In the Spring of 2007 my muse revived. I took a Creative Writing class that forced me to again take up pen and paper (yes, this is an inaccurate statement considering that what I actually took up was my laptop, but it sounds so much more…poetic) and delve into the depths of my experience for new and inspiring material. Even though that class was the bane of my existence (my professor was an exceptionally tough grader), I reluctantly admit that I did in fact learn something. My writing is slowly improving and will continue to improve until I die (if I’m lucky).

That essentially brings us up to date. If I bored you, I apologize. Hopefully my writing will not have the same effect.