Guest Contributor, Naomi Jeske, 17
Happy National Poetry Month!
I know we do not all consider ourselves poets. We are, of course, all writers. But each of us has a unique relationship to words whether we write fantasy or memoir or realistic fiction.
Poetry. We document the past or we predict the future. We are all so different, yet we have all found ourselves here, settling in with this week’s epistle. We have all found love in the world of writing. We all create new characters and worlds and images. We all craft our own histories out of the things we have and the things we long for.
I don’t believe that a poet is simply “a person who writes poems.” A poet is someone who sees more than what is there. Who sees a flower and wonders about its inevitable wilting. Who sees a stranger on the street and wonders about the inner workings of their brain. Who sees a blank page and wonders about the endless ways in which it could be filled.
In that sense, we are all poets. Not because we are writers, but because we are dreamers. Because we imagine life, and death, and love, and loss. Because we build such possibilities out of the angles and curves of letters that someone assigned meaning to. And we assign new meanings. Each and every day, we create new worlds just by existing. The ideas, thoughts, and opinions that both stem from and give way to everything we see and feel are, in their own ways, poems.
So next time you get an email celebrating National Poetry Month, get invited to a poetry reading, or are asked to write a poem, don’t pretend you are anything less than a poet. Each and every one of us are poets. Whether you spend every waking minute writing poems or have never written a poem in your life, you are a poet. Every breath you take is the breath of a poet. Every step you take is the step of a poet. Every word you speak is the word of a poet. We are all poets.
So put a poem in your pocket for Poem in Your Pocket Day on April 10th. Print out some Emily Dickinson or Ocean Vuong. Write a haiku, sonnet, or free-verse. Or, if that doesn’t appeal to you, put in your pocket a blank piece of paper. Because even just wondering how that piece of paper (and the world it will inevitably be filled) could change the world, makes you a poet.