whatladybird:

Your god is Old. He killed children
in Egypt, murdered lovers in the night,
swept sinners dead in a righteous wave.
He told Eve she would die
if she ate the apple, knowing
that he had already planted the seed 
of the tree of Knowledge inside her.
He lied. He stole. He coveted.
Just because you create something,
doesn’t make it yours.

I will not be Job. If god tries
to tear down my house, I will
not weep. I will build it up again myself,
with my own hands. 
That god is not my god. I am New.
I will walk with children.
I will love and learn to swim.
I will eat apples and drink coffee
and build towers.
I will wear flowers
from that old tree 
in my hair.

(via demonrevolutionary)

childishnotions:

writing is safer, somehow
because my pen cannot stutter like my lips do,
and words get stuck in throats,
not fingertips, can’t stumble
on paper trails of blue lines
because writing is definite and clear
and no one can tell if i am crying
or laughing
through written words alone 

(via quandongpie)

muninandhugin:

Wrong End of the Telescope: “The Average Fourth Grader Is A Better Poet Than You, (And Me Too),” Hannah Gamble

commovente:

While in graduate school at the University of Houston, I supplemented my income by working as a writer in residence for Writers in the Schools (WITS). I was with WITS for three years, during which I visited third, fourth, and fifth grade classrooms, and worked with groups of students visiting the Menil museum of art, the Houston Historical Society, and the Houston Arboretum.

When first hired by WITS, I expected that working to explain some of my favorite poems to fourth graders would result in me becoming a better teacher of poetry. What I wasn’t expecting was that (thanks to having my brain blown apart on a weekly basis as I browsed my students’ folders of barely legible poems) I would become a better poet.

Here are some lines written by students in grades 3rd-6th:

“The life of my heart is crimson.”

[Writing about a family member’s recent death:]

“My brother went down/ to the river
and put dirt on.”

 

“Peace be a song,
silver pool of sadness”

“Away went a dull winter wind
that rocked harshly, and bent you said,
‘Father, father’.”

 

[Writing about a terminal illness:]

“I am feeling burdened
and I taste milk……
I mumble, ‘Please,
please run away.’
But it lives where I live.”

“The owls of midnight hoot like me
shutting the door to nothing.”

[Writing about life as a movie:]

“The choir enters, and the director screams
‘Sing with more terror!!!’”

 
“I have provisions. Binary muffins.
It’s an in/out/in/out kind of universe.
We cannot help you,
this is a universe factory.
A sound of rolling symbols.
Disappearing rocks, screams of lizards.
Sanity must prevail. Save vs. Do Not.”

“I, the star god,
take bones from the
underworlds of past times
to create mankind.”

These young writers are addressing subjects that still obsess poets fifty years older: sadness, death, love, responsibility, aging, family, loneliness, and refuge…and they are addressing these subjects in language that is new, and thus has the power to emotionally effect a well-seasoned (/jaded) reader. The average fourth grader is able to do this because she hasn’t been alive long enough to know how to do it (and by “it” I mean talk about the world) any other way.

Story time: When I was a child I believed that one day I might be allowed to cross into an alternate dimension by walking through a quilt hanging on my living room wall. As I got older I stopped believing that this was a possibility—not because I grew to believe that the universe was not an extremely strange place where incomprehensible things could happen on a daily basis, but because I passed year after year after year not being able to enter the spirit realm through a wallhanging.

Anecdote that I hope you’ll find relevant: When Jean Piaget began studying the intellectual processes of children, he was not doing so because he had any special interest in children. Piaget was interested, rather, in the intellectual processes of (adult) humans and was seeking a control group. [His first thought was that the best control group would be comprised of martians but, as he did not have access to martians, he decided to use children since children possessed what is farthest from human consciousness.]

So let’s look at what happens to our young writers as they age [I took these lines from poems written by middle-school/ high school students (Italics, mine)]:

 Snacking on this and that
my friends and I keep the party going
even when it is over”
 

“Whispers of a
secret crush being unraveled”

“I’m trapped in this hole that
I can’t break through”

“Barack Obama in the White House.
I can feel the inspiration
Can you feel it?”

“Now I feel secure with my head held high.

Sad times. By middle school/high school, the average student has learned how normal people talk. The resulting language is underwhelming and predictable—the safe regurgitations of a thoroughly socialized consciousness.

While the average older student’s poems are heavy with allegiance to a limited view of reality, the average younger writer’s vision of the world is nimble and surprising—bazaar, yet true.

Last year I spent every Saturday tutoring an extremely undersocialized kid in vocab. When I taught her the word blandishments (“to flatter, coax, sweet-talk, appeal to”) she wrote this sentence: “The blandishments of the sugar flowers made the cake so much more inviting.”

The sentence is interesting because the student understood that a blandishment is something that attracts favorable attention without fully realizing that people almost always use the word to refer to a human action.

The poet’s job is to forget how people do it.

(source)

what it is like to live with an anxiety disorder

blankslate:

1.
no one ever congratulates you
for doing the really difficult things
like driving on the freeway or getting out of bed or
staying alive

2.
every friendship you make is a countdown
to the moment
when they finally can’t deal
with the missed calls and canceled hangouts
every friendship is on a timer
every friendship expires sooner,
not later

3.
you hear phrases like “bootstraps”
over and over
until you wish you had some to hang
yourself with

4.
you have to learn to simultaneously
relax your muscles
and move them with determination
you have to be in control
and you have to let go
at the same time
it’s enough to drive you into
a blubbering mess

5.
music is a conduit
crying is a conduit
your dad calling is a conduit
everything becomes a conduit
for either having or not having another panic attack

6.
you learn to stop making plans
because you’ll either disappoint yourself
or someone you care about or both

7.
you accept all of it

8.
you hope someday everyone else can
accept it too

(via syncategorem)

aliceinnappyland:

thegoddamazon:

eshusplayground:

fromonesurvivortoanother:

that’s the problem with poetry in the west right now, actually.

mass majority of people are only taught Shakespeare plus 1800s-1900s poetry. if you’re in AP english or other advanced courses you will probably get to learn about post WW2/post-modern type poetry. maybe, just MAYBE, the beat poets. but then it just drops off.

hardly anyone is being taught what kind of poetry is created TODAY. hardly any of it rhymes anymore, and it’s developed into a very personal, deep, dark, casual-toned sort of art.  but no one knows that. everyone thinks it’s Poe couplets and Shakespeare sonnets. 

i’ve been a TA for multiple intro to creative writing courses, and i have seen dozens of students read a Billy Collins or Sharon Olds or Yusef Komunyakaa poem…their entire world changes. these people had no idea poetry could actually be relevant to their lives. 

but because it’s still such a rare thing, most of the literary/poetry circles are sustained by other poets. as in, poets buying other poets’ work. and that makes it stagnate. it’s a lot of privileged, highly-educated people, mostly lower-middle class, with a couple of exceptions who make it big. they just feed each other the same things over and over again, calling it “art”. new ideas and new visions are few and far between.

people who are not writers but who are actively interested in poetry…they are such a rare breed. and it really shouldn’t be that way. everyone should know about poetry that exists beyond the public school curriculum. 

I think this way of teaching poetry is precisely why I haven’t been able to get into it, despite being a writer myself.

Same. I could never write poetry or get into it (except for Rumi and Neruda for personal reasons), because it’s taught in a “it has to be this way or it’s not real poetry” type of way.

I hated poetry in school. I deliberately took literature classes in that had no poetry in it because I wanted nothing to do with it. I discovered Rumi AND Neruda and a host of other writers through tumblr (not friends. not classes. not book stores. tumblr) and my entire world shifted.  

(via amorremanet)