Poetry

As I've been honing my skills as an amateur poet in Creative Writing this semester, I've learned just how baffling the poetry writing process can be. The poem might start as an idea, an impression, or an overwhelming feeling. I once decided to write a poem based on two words that sounded pretty together. A poem can come from anywhere and everywhere at once, but once you decide to write it down, you have to commit to working hard, laboring over each word, and revising until you've done the poem justice. The words may come easily at first, but without skill, practice, and revision, it's going to feel sloppy. *Steps down from soapbox.* Anyway, here's a poem about poetry.

Poetry

And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind. 

Pablo Neruda

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