I’ve decided to start writing poetry. Here’s my first poem, (or “poem,” if you’re a self-important asshole who likes to “belittle” other people’s “creations” by using “quotation marks”), in, oh, 4 years:
Stream of consciousness is what I do best.
Words
More words
Jump.
But I need somewhere to land.
A trail,
a
series
of
boxes
to
hopscotch
in.
I like to play
visual games
with my poetry.
Does it distract me from the task at hand?
Crafting a poem,
Sentence by sentence,
Word
By
Word,
Is painstaking. It calls for perfection.
But a piece of wood, a block of marble, cannot be redone.
Words can be erased.
I’m flyingthroughthispoem.
Guilt, the word floats to the top of my mind.
But I don’t really feel it.
I feel joy.
Freedom.
Life.
Part of it is the techno in the background,
Trumpets playing multicolored flags, a hero’s welcome home.
How poetic!
I think this is the beginning of a beautiful thing.
N.B. I’m not looking for evaluation. I don’t particularly know why I posted this online if I’m not looking for criticism. Go figure.
That was a lot of fun. I’d say I’m giddy with excitement, but I’m not, really, I’m just having a good time. Part of it, of course, is the enthusiasm that comes with staying up late for no reason listening to fun music.
Anyway, I’m taking a free online course, “Writing Poetry With Writer’s Digest Books,” at Barnes and Noble University. They expect you’ll buy the book from B&N Online, but I just got it from the library. Me: 1. B&N: 0. I'm also taking a Speed Reading course, but that was getting kinda boring. For that, I did buy the book. So I guess the score is tied.
I’ve always kinda dreamed of writing things, but I haven’t written a poem since 8th grade, and haven’t written fiction for much longer. The main reason is that I feel compelled to write excellent, awesome work of mind-blowing quality, and I know it’s impossible to pull that out of a hat. My perfectionism gets in the way of actually achieving anything. I fear this tendency will be amplified when I am surrounded by exceptionally talented writers at Yale.
But this summer I resolved to do some non-philosophical-reflection writing, and so I am.
