Poetry

In my procrastination of cleaning/packing up my room in Pass Christian, I have, of course, been reading. I'm waist-deep in a biography of William Alexander Percy that my Dad gave me a couple of weeks ago. It's the kind of writing and the kind of book that I am committing my life too- an academic contextual biography. It's both about the ways Percy had to navigate the Southern world and the entire world as a lover of beauty, poetry, and other men when the South had no room for men to love any of those things. It's wonderful. I plan on re-reading Lanterns on the Levee as soon as possible now that I know some of the context for Percy's autobiography. I had no idea, however, about his sexuality and his relationships until this biography. Another thing I did not realize was that Percy was a pretty renowned poet. A lot of his poetry is quoted in the book and it is beautiful.

But that's not entirely the inspiration for this post.

Reading about Percy's poetry has roused my memory of how I used to write poetry. As far back as the 5th grade I can recall keeping a little notebook where I would write. I kept writing quite a bit on up until my senior year of high school. I was the editor of the literary magazine for my high school and the poetry there is pretty much all that survives of my creative writing thanks to Katrina wiping out documentation of my childhood. I suppose some red snapper has snacked on my journals out there in the gulf. Once I got to college, the only poetry I would write would be for my girlfriend and even at that point I had started slacking off. By the time that relationship and my degree were over, I hadn't written anything creative (besides that poetry class I took Senior year and I apologize profusely to the fellow classmates and the professor- I didn't take it seriously and wrote some pretty awful things).

I want to write again though. Poetry is something to me that is both beautiful and frustrating. With poetry I can read the same poem 100 times and feel 100 different things. Each and every word is so calculated and inspires. Reading silently can induce one feeling, but then you read it out loud to yourself (I find myself doing this and feeling silly about it, but it's very soothing) and it seems to be an entirely different poem. I've always heard that if you want to be a writer, you must first and always be a reader. Well, I read plenty, but I can count on one hand the books of poetry I own. I think I don't own more because reading a book of poetry has no closure. You might finish the poems in the book, but that doesn't mean you have absorbed even the slightest of what that book was set out to accomplish. There will never be closure with poetry. I admire that.

I think I might try writing poetry again. It's bound to be awful and it will be hard to get back into that way of thinking and feeling on a page, but I think it'll be good. Especially with grad school coming up, life can't always be about researching history and writing for conferences and classes. There has to be a creative outlet somewhere.

I promise you this though. I will not subject you to my poetry unless I have absolutely been convinced that it is good. Or at least decent. Or that it won't induce vomiting (some of the poems I vaguely remember reading would definitely do so).