National Poetry Month – Day 1

The first lyrics I remember composing was a song I wanted to write when I was in 4th grade.  I thought that if you could write any song it would get on the radio and we’d be rich!  I always loved creative writing.  I always got great feedback on work I submitted for grades or publication.

In college, I really began to play with words.  I took a creative writing class with a teacher who, despite the fact that I hated it when she’d read her own poetry to the class, taught me one very powerful lesson about writing.  She referred to it as economy of words.  The idea was that when you want to say something important, the fewer words you can use, the more potent the message.  I wrote a lot for that class and another, and in both, my work was often shared as an example of good writing.

As a person who lived to be praised, that fueled a fire in me.  I realized that I could paint pictures and invoke emotions with words.  I cranked out a lot of bad poems punctuated by a good one, now and then.

As I neared the end of college, I realized that I’d gotten married for the wrong reasons, and that I didn’t want to be married anymore.  It would be years before I’d figure out why, in fact I’m still figuring that out, but I began to use my writing as a way to deal with unresolved feelings.

I’ll be sharing some of my favorite poems throughout this month.  Tonight, I’m sharing two, both of which are poems about writing poems.  The first one is called “Soul Therapy,” because that was what my writing became for me when a whole bunch of feeling I didn’t know I had festered to the surface.  The other is just called “Poems.”

Soul Therapy

Poems

bubbling juices of knowing and wishing i didn’t
spill over onto paper
leaving splotches like ink blots
that make you think you see what is not there

— © Jenna Roberts, 1993