Tag: Editor

The Fictionality of Poetry

Grace 1As the poetry editor I don’t focus a lot on fiction. In fact, I stay far away from it. I like to stay in my little poetry bubble with metaphors and ambiguity. Recently I have been having trouble in my personal writing. I’ve been trying to write poems with stories too complex for their lines. Believe me I tried narrative poetry and it didn’t work. I had hit a creative road block all because I was stuck on a form.

The simple fact is that some ideas aren’t meant to be poems. Some stories are meant to be told in prose or in novels. A while ago I told myself I was a poet and restricted myself to just writing poetry. At the time I didn’t realize that language cannot be restricted to one form. Language talks back. Language will tell you when it doesn’t like what it is. During second reads I read fiction pieces. While reading the stories I realized that maybe some of my poems were meant to be something else. So I decided to go on a journey with my language. I sat down with my poetry and asked it what it wanted to be. Some said poems and others said that they were fiction.

The only thing I could do in the situation was comply with my pieces. Nothing is worse than making your pieces be what they don’t want to be. All it does is result in a lot of hair pulling and unhappiness. Through the process of reworking my pieces I started to appreciate fiction more. Fiction has a lot of the same techniques as poetry. Fiction is just poetry with a lot more characters and a more complex plot. I found that fiction isn’t all that bad and I stopped being scared of it. I found that language is its own beast and I shouldn’t try to tame it.

-Grace Green, Poetry Editor

Human Interaction

Savannah BP pic 2

Okefenokee Swamp. Folkston, GA. Everyday life

There are some people that without ever having met, you just know. You watch their movie or hear their music and you just think “I relate to you; we could be friends, even.” You know facts about them and try to emulate their positive traits. This is most common with celebrities, specifically those who are masters of our individual trade. Athletes look up to other athletes, writers to other writers, businessmen to Donald Trump. As a writer –and a teenage girl- there are many people that I idolize and from them draw inspiration. I tried to think of the one person who inspired me the most, who handed me life’s lessons one at a time until I really felt that I found my footing. If you talk to as many people as I have, you’ll realize that this is nearly an impossible task.

I thought that I could cite Emily Dickinson, who made me first want to be a poet with “Hope is the Thing With Feathers,” or Mrs. Melanson who taught me to be who you are unapologetically, even if at times that means you have to be a little cynical. I thought about my mother, who –despite her shortcomings- implanted within me a set of morals that can’t be messed with, no matter who I talk to or what I do in my future. I started jotting down every Walt Disney fact that I know. How can one not draw inspiration from the original voice of Mickey himself?

But then I realized that maybe I don’t have to write a miniature feature on any one individual. We learn from one another all the time; that is the silver lining of constant human interaction. During the hum drum of day to day life, we steadily gain lessons from those that we watch on TV, those who we read in books or on websites, if we only keep our eyes and ears open.

-Savannah Thanscheidt, Web Editor 

A Lotus in Muddy Waters

Anna BP pic 2I have never been the type of girl that liked flowers. To me they were always over used and underappreciated. I didn’t have a need for them. But last year my grandmother took me down to black creek and listened to the water flow by and I saw a pink Lotus. It was the first flower that I had ever seen that made me feel something. I felt at peace. Before we left I plucked it from the water and took it home with me. I let it dry out and kept it in a jar on my dresser.

After awhile of waking up to it every morning I started to become curious of its meaning. I learned that the lotus represented being at peace in muddy waters. Those few words sparked something in me.

I had always been the most negative, cynical person in the room, never giving anything a chance to work out. I was tired of feeling that way but I didn’t know how to separate myself from that familiar, warm lifestyle but that flower and its secret meaning showed me that there could be beauty in the murky as long as you could be at ease with your surroundings.

I began to carry that meaning around with me everywhere I went. I let that entire philosophy tangle its way into my life because I had nothing left to lose if it didn’t work out. That was the best decision I ever made. Ever since then I’ve taught myself to breathe before stressing, listen before speaking. I’ve taught myself to accept things as they come and look at things in the brightest light possible. I’ve changed so much in the best year and all my changes have been for the better all because of one simple dried up flower.

-Anna Dominguez, Junior Poetry Editor