Hello friends,
If you have the Co—Star app, you know it sends notifications that are almost prophetic. The daily advice is sometimes poignant, sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking. It's is entertaining, if nothing else. This morning, Co—Star told me to be a poem.
As a poet, I’m a little upset I didn’t come up with that line myself. You can’t win ‘em all, I guess. But I do want to delve into that idea of embodying poetry. Poetry makes even the ugliest things beautiful. Even when the words are uncomfortable, you can’t deny their power. The writer chooses each word with care, placing them just so. Poetry speaks to both form and function, telling a story more efficiently and eloquently than longer prose. The shortest poems often pierce the soul sharpest.
One of my favorite aspects of poetry is the ability to play with words. I can manipulate their shape and shift them into new forms. I can flip the expected meaning on its head. Metaphor becomes a playground, opening doors where I never thought to look for them. In poetry, I can be both a field of wildflowers and a flock of carrion crows. I can dip my hands deep within myself and search around in my guts, bloody and warm. I can sew up the wound with embroidery thread, my needle a paintbrush. My scars can be watercolors.
When I saw Co—Star’s message today, though, I realized I only think of myself as a poem when I’m writing poetry. It never occurred to me to be a poem all the time. Now it seems so obvious. The kink in my neck becomes a ball of tangled yarn, difficult to unsnarl but capable of great warmth. On fatigue-ridden days I transform into the Everglades. Movement is minimal, but the waters turn over, and life abounds.
This newsletter is a short one, but I think that’s fitting. What can you imagine in the negative space? How are you a poem?
Until next time,
Yardena