They don't teach you in high school how poetry feels. The beauty of it gets lost in the math: subtract the emotion and you're left scanning meter and analyzing rhyme schemes without feeling the weight behind the words. Poetry isn't calculus. Poetry is art. It's a tradition passed down from parents to children, during bedtimes and over campfires. Poetry isn't just designed for AP test takers; it's part of what makes us human. I learned to love poetry hesitantly, quietly, gently; it came like learning to walk.
A couple poems and poets taught me that poetry isn't all stuffy sestinas and hard-to-understand aubades; it's real, it hits people sometimes right in the heart and other times right in the gut.
1. Sabrina Benaim, "Explaining My Depression To My Mother"
"It's just not that fun to have fun when you don't want to have fun."
This poem is so honest it's scary. Sabrina trembles on stage and I can hear her voice like my own, see myself in her eyes. This isn't a poem people create theories about -- it's obvious what she feels, what she sees, what she's afraid of. She's an everyday person writing a poem from an everyday perspective. I never really considered that before. Everyone has stories to tell, and not every poet is Elizabeth Bishop. Not everyone has to be. Watch here.
2. Dominique Christina and Denise Frohman "No Child Left Behind"
"They think poetry is something old white people do."
I stumbled upon this poem quite by accident while doing research for an education class. Due partially to some reasons outlined in this poem, I quickly dropped out of the education program. I, too, thought poetry was something old white people did; to see it so honest and vital and about something concrete and pressing politically was a total revolution of how I saw poetry. It gave a voice and a medium to people who don't get it in 10th-grade literature textbooks and on the "Literature" shelves at Barnes & Noble. Watch here.
3. Taylor Mali, "Depression, Too, Is a Type of Fire"
"Call me her knight in shattered armor."
After my creative writing teacher showed us one of Taylor's poems in class that morning, I looked up a couple other videos and eventually ended up here. This poem surprised me because of both its honesty, self-deprecation, and beautiful language. Again, the universality struck me -- these are problems that happen to, unfortunately, so many people. Watch here.
4. Jeanann Verlee, "Unsolicited Advice to Adolescent Girls With Crooked Teeth and Pink Hair"
"When your geometry teacher puts up a banner that says 'learn how to do math or learn how to be a mama,' don't take your first feminist stand by leaving the classroom."
Written and performed in a way that must come from experience, Jeanann's delivery is spot-on. It's ripe with experiences that hit hard and feel so, so real and honest, made even more powerful by her repetition of key phrases. Though I was never pink-haired as an adolescent, I think I wanted to be, and I felt Jeanann's words rattle my soul when the cage of my heart needed it most. Watch here.
5. Catalina Ferro, "Anxiety Group"
"It must be exhausting to want to live this much."
She reeled me in as another insomniac. We're a secret club that no one likes to talk about, the girls with bags under their eyes, the men who drink coffee more than water. No one likes to talk about it. But that's a great thing about poetry, I learned: no one likes to talk about it, but here, they can. It's OK to. No one will tell them it's gross, it's wrong, it stresses me out. Everyone gets a turn on the mic. Even if you're really anxious about it. Watch here.
I didn't learn to love poetry until I saw other people learned to love it, too. It's not all nature imagery and terms to memorize: it's real. It's diverse. It's organic. It sits with you and grows, blends together the best parts of writing and the best parts of theater. Poetry is art, but it's a community, too. And everyone's voice is worth hearing.
Remember: poetry is both as old and as new as people are.
