It started in the sixth grade. A part of my English and Literature course was creative writing. It had a beautiful workbook -- iridescent and purple, and filled with watercolor pictures and gentle writing exercises designed to tease polished thoughts from the rock tumbler that is a sixth grader's brain. I adored that class. I'll never forget finishing my first poem: the workbook page was transparent in spots where I had erased again and again, hunting for the right words. The instructions clearly said to construct your poem on scratch paper, and copy the finished product to the book, but I couldn't resist. I also couldn't call it finished. For days, I erased and rewrote over that worksheet, mesmerized by the magic of the right word in the right place.
It never quite stopped.
Soon I had composition books full of writing. Never left the house without one tucked under my arm. I began to read as much poetry as I wrote, checking out stacks of poetry anthologies on my grandma's library card. The first book I bought on a trip alone to a bookstore with my friend was an Emily Dickinson collection. Soon, little hieroglyphics appeared on the table of contents: a heart, if it inspired me, and a brain, if I memorized it. Years ticked by-- my music tastes, clothes, hair, and interests changed, but I never stopped writing poetry. It was my heart's way of relaying messages to my head.
However, I never once considered myself a poet.
I never shared my writing with anyone. It felt invasive and vulnerable, like setting my diary out on the coffee table for light reading. No matter how proud I was about a poem that I had lovingly crafted, I was scared to let it out into the world. "What if..." became my easy out: What if it's bad writing? What if people don't get it? What if they want to read more?
After all, Emily Dickinson was a poet. Frost, Longfellow, Williams, Cummings, Whitman were poets.
I just like to write poems.
Content with my self-deemed place in the world, I continued to casually write throughout college. It came in bursts: months would pass without a single poem, and then twenty would get typed madly into OneNote in the span of a few days. No one knew I wrote.
Until I procrastinated too hard on a presentation. It was a film class, and the assignment was easy enough: present your thoughts on the film we watched. As the clock turned 1 AM, I stared blurry-eyed at my computer. Nothing was happening. No amount of fancy PowerPoint themes could conjure an inspired thesis.
So, I turned to the only thing the film left me inspired to do.
The next day, I was a wreck. My presentation was two slides: A title, and thirty-one lines of late night poetry. Every free moment between classes I tried to make something else, but nothing came. I walked to class with an unusual amount of dread, completely devoid of my usual pre-presentation confidence. Are you really going to do this?
My turn to present. Present what? What am I doing? My brain took the time to casually remind me, as I fumbled with the flash drive in my shaking hands, that I had never read my poetry out loud to anyone before--- let alone in a group of honor students and an English professor. Thanks for pointing that out, brain. Glad we had this talk.
I stood there, and introduced my presentation with "I didn't know what to present, so I wrote this instead and I think it sums up my feelings pretty well so..." Nailed it. Good intro.
My voice shook almost as hard as my hands. In that moment, standing there and read thirty-one lines to eight people seemed like the scariest task in the world. And I brought it on myself.
Thirty-one lines, one line at a time: that was my survival plan. Breathe at the commas, Beth. Breathe. The final line ended after a small eternity. I felt dizzy.
---silence. Then, a quiet "wow" from the back of the room. Heat flooded my face. I walked back to my seat, unsure if that was the bravest or the stupidest decision I had made in awhile. The rest of the hour was going to be dedicated to calming down and avoiding eye contact with the professor. Did I just present a poem for an assignment? Yes. Yes, you did. My friend leaned over and whispered:
"You write?! I didn't know you were a poet!"
Neither did I. Does nearly passing out while reading your own words a poet make? If that's the case, then maybe. Years of pent up nervousness and doubt, blown wide open by two PowerPoint slides. Why did I do it?
Maybe, my heart interjected, it's because you love it.
Yes. Yes, I do.
