reviving my dead poet
I've tried for years to revive the dead poet inside me. There lives a seventeen year old in a cavity in my chest who swore all she'd ever do was wrote poems, swore it was all she was good at, swore she didn't know who she was without it. A few years out from my last poetic masterpiece, I'm unsure the spark will ever return with quite the same brilliance, but that doesn't mean I should stop trying to foster the flame.
I rewatched Janet Planet (dir. Annie Baker) last night and found myself struck by Avi's breif quotation of Rainer Maria Rilke's "Elegy IV" that reads:
"And you, my parents, am I not right? You who loved me for that small beginning of my love for you from which I always shyly turned away, because the distance in your features grew, changed, even while I loved it, into cosmic space where you no longer were."
The very literate and very poignant movie aside, the beauty of the quotation made me want to read the entire poem. I looked it up trying to find it for free online, and found it on AllPoetry. From what I've gathered, it's a poetry-hosting website where you can read famous poems posted by the moderators (from long-dead poets) and from people posting their own poetry to the site.
I made an account and wrote a few poems in the editor right away. As my fingers flew across the keyboard, I was taken aback! Was this really the push I needed? The poems aren't masterpieces by any means, but they're mine.
In terms of my experience on the site, all is positive! I haven't run into anything suspicious or unwanted, and all the comments I've received have been positive. The only thing I don't totally enjoy is the visible follower count, but that's neither here nor there. The platform encourages users to comment on one another's posts by preventing publishing until you've left a certain number of comments, which I don't mind. I enjoy the community-building aspect of it, and the competitions and levels seem like a lot of fun!
For actually writing poetry, I think this is a great way to get me back in the game. Surrounded by other hobby writers, I think I've found a corner of the internet where I am unafraid to be a poet again.
Poetry for me was always a way of processing emotions abstractly. I found my break from poetry helpful in forcing me to learn to write coherently, but I've been itching to express myself more creatively these days (both visually and otherwise). The poetry I'm writing on the site is nothing like what I used to write, it's something new.
I'm excited!