Every Day Is a Poem by Jacqueline Suskin (manga ereader txt) 📗

EXERCISES FOR BEING A POET

GIVE YOURSELF THE TOOLS

Find the Poet in Your Life

Do you know any poets personally? Maybe you’re the only poet you know? Maybe your favorite poet feels like a friend because you’ve read their work so many times? We should all have poets in our lives, someone who alerts us to the magic within the mundane, someone who concentrates on the glorious wonder of being here on earth and condenses it into a readable contribution. Someone who asks the hard questions and answers them in fascinating and original ways; someone who must write it all down. Go out to poetry readings and find them. Let them be your mentors; let them nurture you or bring you into their circle. Ask them about their process and support their work. Hire them to edit your writing or to give advice. We all need each other, readers and writers, in a cyclical offering of appreciation and encouragement.

Read a Lot of Poetry

If you want to write poetry, you need to read a lot of poetry. You need to read it out loud to no one but yourself or to your best friend, your lover, your mom, your dog, your boss. Read it on the bus, in bed, in the forest, in the bathtub, in the middle of the night. You need to read it every single day. At least one poem a day. Go to your local bookstore or library and browse, flip through pages of poetry, discover your favorite poet, find the voice that you like most and devour everything by that writer. Find out which writers this writer was inspired by and joyously follow the endless lineage of language.

WHEN YOU READ A POEM,

DONT’ MET HUNG UP ON

THE MEANING OF THE PIECE;

JUST ENJOY THE PARTS

THAT SPEAK TO YOU.

When I was younger, my mom told me she didn’t understand poetry. I told her to let go of her notion that she needed to comprehend every word of my writing. Was there a line that jogged a memory for her? Did she see a color or smell a scent as she read this stanza? Did a word sound good to her? Did a part of the verse cause her to feel an emotion? As she answered my questions, I’d tell her, “Yes, that’s it. You got it. That’s what the poem is about!” She felt liberated with this direction and was finally able to take pleasure in poetry. Just choose whatever works for you in a poem and let that be enough. Once a poet publishes their work or puts it out there, it belongs to the reader, and we get to ingest it in whatever way makes sense to us.

The important thing is that we consume

poetry frequently enough that it becomes a

major part of how we interpret the world.

Vultures

The goat trails behind me

grabbing mouthfuls of coltsfoot

and the feathers of a vulture cut

the air above us. The sound

of such largeness in flight

is anything but gentle.

In the clearing, the sun bleeds orange

over everything, filtered by season’s wildfire.

I see this bird is not alone.

Ten buzzards circling means death.

I feel no apprehension

as I try to get a glimpse of their meal

and wonder over life’s secret workings.

Is there a rule for who receives today’s carcass?

Who declares which belly or beak this death belongs to?

Each detail reveals some unsavory crease

that allows the whole of life to fold right.

I nod upward and the goat cocks his head

before running home full speed.

Write in a Journal

You need to write in a journal, not just on a computer. Your handwriting, the pencil on the paper, the ink on the paper—it’s a spell for inspiration. My journal is the sacred center of my poetic practice. It’s a sloppy, private place for tangled thoughts and ideas that I revisit often. My journal is a pep talk. It’s where I build myself up, where I stand up for my inner voice, where I remind myself that I have a wild ability to fill up page after page and nothing can get in the way of that outpour. Every entry holds a key to a deeper understanding of myself, my goals, and my needs. My journal doesn’t require any format, it can be a manic mess, and it’s a treasure trove of material.

I leave symbols for myself in my journals so that when I sift through them, I can easily find ideas I know are meant to be bigger, ideas I want to flesh out. For example, in a long ramble about a visit to Northern California, there’s an asterisk next to a section about a vulture I saw one evening when walking on the road. I wanted to remember to expand upon this scene and turn it into a poem at a later time.

I love going back through my journals and finding my own directions there, markings that say, Yes, write more about this; turn back to this entry and think harder; get into it further; linger on this feeling or this occasion. Your journal is just for you. It’s your outlet, your praise, your pain and exhilaration expressed by your own hand. I can’t stress enough how important it is for you to incorporate journaling into your writing ritual.

I LIKE WRITING ON

A PLAIN WHITE PAGE.

I FIND IT’S EASIER TO

FEEL THROUGH MY IDEAS

FREELY WITHOUT LINES

OR BOROERS.

Try coming up with a few of your own

journaling symbols:

WRITING PRACTICE

FIND A ROUTINE AND SHOW UP FOR IT

You should write every day. It doesn’t always have to be poetry, but some form of freewriting needs to happen so you can keep your muscle toned, your tool sharp, and your skill in use.

To get yourself into a freewriting ritual, try writing things down all day long: things that inspire you, scenes you notice on your drive to work, great phrases you