Category: Craft

Elusive Poetry

Zac's picPoetry seems to be a sort of elusive creature to a lot of people. When people read poetry it seems to slip right past them, the words on the page cluttering together and then becoming a smaller and smaller dot on the page until they are almost nothing, the meaning gone with the readers want to find meaning, and writing it can be very much the same way. You don’t know what you are writing until it is out there on the page and even then, you find yourself wondering “what even is this?” or “am I okay?”

But, in the words of poet Li-Young Lee “a poem is like a score for the human voice.” Poetry may be elusive, and will confound us at times, but it cannot be denied that when truly and thoroughly read poetry is a universal language in which all our souls connect and speak in. Thoroughly written, it becomes a language for us to explore our own selves, and by extent, other people as well. Therefore when posed with the question of what inspires my poetry, I have to say that I think that everything inspires my poetry, even things that I don’t know inspire it.

If you were to ask me two years ago what I thought about poetry, and what inspired me I couldn’t have given you an answer. That is because poetry was still an elusive beast to me, and I had yet to unlock the deep emotional connection with my writing that it takes to write it. I only began to write poetry, and get inspiration for it, when I realized that there was something deep within myself that begged to be explored and heard. A voice that could not be let out in my everyday life. A score that I needed to write, for my voice, and for the voices of people who have lived through similar experiences and don’t have the privilege (and curse) of knowing how to write about it.

I am inspired every day, by the things I feel, and the things I see that make me feel. If an experience is strong enough to make me cry, or laugh, or be angry I know that it is worth writing about. I am inspired by the words of poets like Li-Young Lee whose craft and mastery of words seems otherworldly to me, being able to string together the perfect line that makes even the people who don’t want to read poetry stop and think for even just a moment.

Poetry is an elusive animal, one that I don’t think even the most skilled poets have learned to tame. It is an animal that resides inside every one, a voice that is waiting to be unlocked, a voice spoken through the inspiration of every humans common experiences and connections.

–Zac Carter, Co-Art Editor

The Human Nature of Nature

Chelsea Ashley Feb Blog PictureGrowing up, I wasn’t a big fan of the outdoors. I was a brownie in a Girl Scout troop, but I always skipped out on the camping trips. The thought of sleeping outside of a house where bugs were most definitely present and there was the prospect of wild animals never seemed alluring to me. I sometimes walked around parks with my friends, but if a bug even buzzed around her heads at a pitch too high for our liking we’d make our way back inside. I found air conditioning and glass sliding doors more comforting than any ducks’ pond or shady tree.

Since I have started writing, I have learned to pay attention to the smaller details. I’ve been in line to buy an item of clothing and heard a single sentence from my fellow customers behind me that spark an idea in my head. I’ve watched my mom fiddle with her bracelets and watch the sound they make tumbling down her wrist, and knew that I needed to write that moment down. The neon color of a hat will give me a story idea. The way a stranger glances back at her car while walking into a store will give me a poem idea. This attention to smaller details of human nature made me feel as if my lack of appreciation of actual nature could be holding me back in my writing life. How could I pay attention to the smaller details in life when I wasn’t paying attention to the smaller details that made up the physical realm of everyone’s lives? It’s the squirrel that seemed to run into the road as soon as it saw me coming at 45 mph. It’s the Japanese plum trees that grow bulbs of yellow and tilt slightly to the right. The smallest of details are the ones I pass everyday without even thinking about them, the ones that were here before I was born, before my mother was born, and beyond. I now try to incorporate the physical beauty of nature into my writing, but not in just the description of setting or comparing someone’s eyes to a blossoming rose. I try to compare physical nature to human nature, two very present aspects of our lives that are both predictable and unpredictable. I think that is why both natures are so interesting to write about. For example, the ocean is vast and what lives underneath is surface is both a mystery and perpetual fear to humans. However, what we know for sure is that the white bubble waves of the ocean will always come back and meet the shore. I think humans are like that as well. You can think someone is the most complex person in the world, but everyone has habits and flaws. Everyone has basic instincts that kick in when in a situation. It is human nature.

I still don’t find myself in nature, but it’s not because I’m avoiding it. Somehow as I’ve written about the beauty of nature and what it can represent in humans, I’ve found myself wanting to be surrounded by sunlight, whistling birds, and crouching trees with swinging moss. When I’m able to write outdoors, I breathe in crisp, spring air and breathe out whatever I’m writing, all while swatting at a mosquito the process.

–Chelsea Ashley, Digital Media Editor

Let’s Talk About Birds

cockatiels for blogpostNature is wonderful—Baobab trees are mystifying, marvels of Peru are enchanting, and Nudibranchs are striking. The ocean is terrifying considering how much we do not know. In the words of Walt Whitman, “give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed”. But, given where I live, this is not quite so easy to access. I see many trees dripping with moss from inside my car as I drive and I see pruned wax myrtles swell with bobbing lizards while I walk my dog

Neither of these are particularly inspiring to me, having become a part of the early-morning/way-too-late-night generic landscape. They are beautiful, but spark no inspiration. They’re pleasant and colorful—like Mike and Ikes—but ultimately fade to the background.

For me, the exception to this rule is birds. Descended from dinosaurs, wickedly smart and completely misunderstood, these feathered heroes (when observed in the world) can’t not inspire. European Great Tits bludgeon bats to death. Nuthatches booby-trap their nests with poison. Lyrebirds can perfectly mimic the sounds of camera shutters and chain saws. They behave particularly, and often bizarrely, and the least flashy are sometimes the most interesting.

I have written many short stories and poems about birds, and briefly considered studying ornithology in college. I think the draw, for me, is both the mystique and the opportunities for anthropomorphization. Specific birds remind me of specific people, and for readers, a bird is something often easy to understand as the first layer of a metaphor.

There’s a reason that there are state birds (Florida’s is the Northern Mockingbird), and that ancient peoples worshiped them. They’re ancient, but still quirky. They’re hollow humans that can fly—and have personalities often just as defined.

PROMPT: Research a bird species and write a poem or short story where the bird is a metaphor for a person in your life or a character’s life. Fiction minimum 400 words; poetry minimum 15 lines.

–Zarra Marlowe, Managing Editor