Before I discovered it, I used to think poetry was just a combination of letters and words arranged into lines. Then one day I took a shovel and I dug deep into it, and I found seeds buried there that had not yet bloomed. There was something beautiful there, lying in wait. This is what I discovered about poetry:
It is not always words. It’s a look or a gesture, a glance that says the whole world without even opening the mouth. It’s the graceful curve of a back or the cool touch of a palm.
But many times it is words. Poetry is a conversation between the reader and the author, and like a memoir, it spills the author’s thoughts onto the page. It’s a picture frame that the author has to fill in.
Poetry is looking at a rose and not seeing a flower with petals. Poetry is looking at that rose and wondering how to rip it apart, into pieces of velvety red, to analyze it and tear some sense from it. Poetry is when you look at something and you truly see it.
Poetry is this tragic, fragile, yearning medium that is constantly changing. And as it changes, as it evolves, it changes the writer too: irrevocably. When poetry touches you, you are never the same again. You can never be.