We all go through it.
There is a period of time, every summer, where we think to ourselves, "Maybe I should exercise my mind a little today.... maybe go to the bookstore instead of sitting in my air conditioned house all day, mindlessly watching reruns of 'How I Met Your Mother.'" We go to our local Barnes and Noble, looking so hard for a book to sink our teeth (...or eyes) into, but for some reason we fall short, leaving the store empty handed.
(via creatememe.com)
Let's face it... these are the mid-summer commitment issues. We don't necessarily always want to commit to 500 pages or more, because we're not sure when we'll be able to pick our book up next.
Poetry is a perfect way to commit ourselves to reading, but in short spurts. We can explore new material, reading into the human experience, without necessarily doing it through your typical cohesive story – exposition, rising action, climax, denouement, falling action... Blah. Poetry is very easy to find and fun to explore... just surf the web for some of these names below, you won't regret it!
If you think poetry might be for you, here are some personal favorites:
A few bad-ass female poets who will really captivate you with their open portrayals of sexuality, desire for power, and thirst for answers in this world.... These women are fearlessly able to provide us with their personal accounts of confusion, vulnerability, fault, and desire with a cynical and shocking sting.
- Ariana Reines, my spirit animal and hair twin, has brought us "The Cow," "Coeur De Lion," and "Mercury." Works that so shockingly and honestly bring her every failed relationship, intimate sexual experience, and self-deprecating thought to fruition. http://arianareines.tumblr.com
- Camille Rankine writes poems that are deep, urgent, and frightfully real without being either simplistic or pretentious. She doesn't even have a book out yet, but her voice is already so well-developed it's unbelievable. No one else writes like her. http://camillerankine.com
- Chelsey Minnis just shimmers "like flushing sequins down the toilet" with her awesome works including "Zirconia," "Bad Bad," and "Poemland."
- Melissa Broder dominates with her assertive voice in "Scarecrone," "Meat Heart" and "When You Say One Thing But Mean Your Mother"... not to mention, @melissabroder is actually the most entertaining human on Twitter. http://www.melissabroder.com
Sometimes, poetry is just about laughing at ourselves, society, and the human experience. Thank you, Jim Behrle, for http://bestamericanpoetry.tumblr.com, where he adds witty, ridiculous, embarrassing annotations onto comics and poems... like how awesome is that?
(via studio360.org)
When we need some religious or simply spiritual inspiration, these writers can help to provide guidance through their exploratory works.
- Christian Wiman, a West Texan who was raised Baptist and returned to his faith when diagnosed with incurable cancer of the blood (and has documented his faith journey in poetry, among other forms). "Every Riven Thing"
- Noelle Kocot,
an extremely prolific Roman Catholic poet who doesn't shy away from the
spiritual dimension of poetry; she also wrote through the grief of
losing her husband to a drug overdose. "Soul in Space," "The Bigger World" and "Sunny Wednesday"
For those of us who like to read the newspaper, criticize and question the world in which we live, explore social issues, injustice, and struggles within our world (sexuality, privacy, etc.), these poets are ones to look into.
- Claudia Rankine: unrelated
to Camille, her most recent book "Citizen" explores the unique situation
of race in contemporary America in light of cases like Trayvon Martin,
Eric Garner, and Michael Brown; her work is SUPER current, considering
the recent Charleston shooting. http://claudiarankine.com
- Tim Dlugos's poem "G-9" is a heartbreaking meditation on AIDS that reflects the immense difficulty of losing friends & lovers much too quickly; the poem is even more devastating in light of the fact that Dlugos himself succumbed to the disease. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/242988
So there it is, folks... try and trade in that dusty John Green novel with something new. You won't regret it!
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