What is Poetry?

Hmmm. I don’t know. That’s a pretty big question. Words on a page? A way of living? Aesthetic choices? Words that rhyme? Something that sounds deep?

Here’s what poetry means to me…

Poetry is how someone expresses themselves. Poetry is showing someone a picture that can not be seen any other way. Poetry is the way that I perceive life, how it all ties together. Poetry is the happy and the sad and how they both exist together, often at the same time.

Poetry is big to me. It is something that I feel came upon me. I discovered it by accident. I thought it was kind of a joke thing, like performative and cringy. I thought that it was for people that just wanted to feel deep and sophisticated until I actually started to write it.

Poetry let me put on a page what I could never express before. It gave me the freedom to express my ideas without fear of interpretation or language. It let me define my struggles and not the other way around. It opened my brain up to new ways of thinking and perceiving ideas.

It empowered me to feel creative and artistic.

Unfortunately, I feel like poetry is still very much a niche community. It’s not among the best selling genres of books, and most people couldn’t tell you a real poem they read. Companies don’t use it for their advertisements and movies don’t talk about it. The best we get is musical artists, but that just takes away the point. Music is great because it is song writing mixed with sound. That’s what makes it different. Poetry is great because it’s just you and the words in front of you. The music is inside and nobody else can hear it. The explosions of colors in your brain are only for you. The thoughts and feelings are only felt by you. That is what makes poetry beautiful.

If I did have some sort of crazy goal as a writer, it would be to help make poetry more popular. I don’t want it to become mainstream and watered-down. I simply think that so many people are missing out on discovering a new part of themselves that can be found through poetry.

To be honest I never sat down and thought, “I want to be a poet.” I’m not even sure if I can call myself that still, despite having published two poetry books. I simply write poetry because I need to. I’m not sure how else to communicate these ideas and feelings. I want to organize my beliefs into these beautiful works of art. I want to be vulnerable. I want to lay it all out in the most intimate way. I want the satisfaction of reading what I wrote and thinking “that’s it! that’s exactly how I feel right now!” I want someone to read these things and have their own life reflect in front of them. I want the satisfaction of seeing words come together to show what only existed in the nebula of my mind.

So yes, I write poetry because I don’t know what else to call it. Does that make me a poet? I’m not sure, but I do know that I do this because I need to. I write because I love it and because I love it I shall keep on writing.