Paying Homage Where Homage is Due

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My love for poetry began way back when I was in second grade. This was when I did not even know about its artistic elements of meaning, sound, and rhythm. Journaling was a way to put my thoughts and feelings onto paper, and turning it into something artistic and poetic was a fun twist. I loved seeing how many rhyming words I could piece together (and still have it make some sort of sense). In third grade, my best friend and I wrote a collection of poems (mostly about the random objects and nature around us). We tied each piece of paper together with yarn and gave it to our teacher for the holidays.

Around the same time, I wrote my mom a poem for the first time and gave it to her as a gift. However, that is one of the only poems I have written that I’ve shared with my family.

I keep my writing close to my heart where it is protected and kept hidden. From what? I’m not sure. Maybe from judgment, maybe I do it so others don’t see what I think or feel in a given moment of time.

Either way, my love for poetry evolved in the heat of the Tumblr era (circa 2011-12), where I discovered Madisen Kuhn. She is also in her mid-twenties and is a master at pouring her heart out onto the pages of her three published books. In school, I had always learned about William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Frost, Henry David Thoreau, and Edgar Allen Poe. Although there is something to love about each of them (and several other famous poets), my heart lies with Mary Oliver and Sylvia Plath.

I am drawn to Mary’s ability to poignantly describe everyday life and the natural world, and I commend Sylvia for her evocative writing style and ability to share raw emotions surrounding mental illness, nature, love, hate, life, and death. Both writers have evocative collections of writing. I highly recommend exploring their libraries of work if you wish to delve into the wonderful world of poetry.

XOXO,

Carly