Poetry

I do not like poetry. I do not write it. I do not read it. It doesn't make me "feel". I'm not inspired in everyday life to write rythmic or rhyming sentences to express my deep pain or gratitude or observations...blahblahblah.

This blog entry is about my journey to finding a poem that I CAN relate to, one that I get, I feel, I grin a little when I read it. But I'm getting a little ahead of myself. Let's go back to my first solid memory of poetry having an affect on my life.

Back to 7th grade. Up until this point, I'd kind of dodged assignments that required any sort of poetry writing. I was kind of notorious for not turning in homework, so I'm sure that nobody noticed the pattern of missing poems. At some point I find myself in Mrs. Rinehold's English class and feeling particularly hateful towards Heather Schwartzman (name is SLIGHTLY changed...if anyone from my class reads this they'd know EXACTLY who I'm writing about...and I don't care). Heather was a snotty, two-faced, much more pretty girl that was in my class. She teased me, made me feel small...and I'd had enough. I composed my poetic masterpeice entitled, "Schwartz the Bat". It was not great. It wasn't even mediocre, much less creative. It was merely a device for me to unleash my hurt and anguish over being not as pretty, getting bullied, and not having as many friends as Heather.

The title was not veiled and Mrs. Rinehold told my mother that I was, "going through some sort of phase". I would REALLY like to visit Mrs. Rinehold and let her know that it wasn't a "phase" at all, but the beginnings of a spiral of self-loathing that would ultimately manifest itself in a life of self-destruction and drug abuse. But I'm getting off the topic at hand...I love myself now, I don't do drugs...all is well...back to poetry.

Fast forward to a couple months ago. I've become an adult that loves literature of all kinds...except poetry. I don't even try to pretend to be deep and act like I enjoy it...because I don't.

I borrowed a book from Ellen (her name will not be changed, I have no immediate plans of writing nasty or innapropriate things about her, she rocks). I was going through some "issues" with making bad choices and she thought this book would enlighten me slightly. I'm not sure if she slipped this poem to me on purpose, but tucked into the bound spine of this book (which I'm very much enjoying) was a half peice of pink cardstock with a poem on it. I didn't notice it was a poem until a couple weeks ago. To me, it was simply a pink bookmark because all poems are dead to me...they do not exist in my world.

One night, I opened the book to read and I noticed the poem. "Hmmm, what's this? Did Ellen put this in here for a particular reason?". I read the poem and I liked the flow of it. Could it just be my mood? I read it again the next night and I got it a little more. I've read that poem almost every night since then (it's been almost a month). Each time I understand it more, I connect it to something in my life in some way. It's beautiful, simple, and has come to have deeper meaning with each reading. My next posting will be this poem. I love it. And I'm still not sure if Ellen meant it for me or not, but I'm grateful because it's opened up a part of me that hadn't been there before.