I Believe in Poetry
I believe in poetry. In the book Franny and Zooey, one of J.D. Salinger’s characters says, to be a poet you have to leave something beautiful behind. That’s my goal in life. I don’t write poetry because I think I’m good at it, but because there is so much in life that is prettier than we see.
I love being able to take something simple from my daily life and make it memorable. I wrote one of my favorite pieces at the local diner. I was staring at my coffee cup, trying to think of something to write about. Then the way the bubbles bounced through the swirling creamer caught my eye. The movement of those bubbles against the creamer was incredible, and right in front of me! The task of communicating what I feel staring into that cup, or falling for the next girl, or just sharing a great night with friends is a thrill.
Poetry is a way to communicate and to connect with people. When I perform onstage, I give everyone there a piece of me. After one of my favorite shows, a woman I had never met came up to me and just hugged me. She told me she had been abused as a child, and my poem let her know she wasn’t alone. My shared memories and feelings created a connection between two people … and that’s beautiful.
I remember the first book of poetry I owned. It was Charles Bukowski’s Love is a Dog from Hell. That book spoke to me more about the truth of life than I had learned anywhere else. It was raw and gritty, sometimes dirty, but ultimately truth on a page. Bukowski’s book talks about the things we all hide from: The worries of living paycheck to paycheck, the heartbreak of coming down after a night of drinking, and the stay-strong attitude that keeps a working man going. A lot of people don’t like Bukowski. He doesn’t use fancy words, and he writes about regular people. But he writes about the world I live in and shows me regular people can live poetic lives.
I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t a poet. One of my favorite lines came from a history professor who jokingly told the class, “Consciousness is hard to spell, so I don’t use it.” That was powerful. People are deep even when they don’t mean to be. We all have important truths to bring to the world, and that’s what makes us poets.
It takes passion to be a poet. It’s not easy. You have to eat it, sleep with it, and occasionally you have to get in a fistfight with it. You have to face the world in its rawest and realest form. It may be rough, but I would lose my mind if I couldn’t write. I have to get the emotions out. That’s how I know Poetry is my life. I’ve never faced anything as difficult, or as rewarding, as finishing a good poem…a poem that is both truth and beauty.
I believe in poetry because it is my life.
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