By Rachel Vinyard, written December 2021
Poetry, in my opinion, is one of the most versatile art forms when it comes to writing. There’s little you can’t do with poetry. There are classical forms of poetry—poems with set rhythm and calculated linage—and more abstract forms of poetry—poems following no rhythm or math, free-flowing and experimental. Poetry is for everyone. It doesn’t exclude any experience or truth. Readers can easily find themselves in the poetry that speaks to them.
One thing I love about poetry is how experimental it can be in terms of form. I’ve seen poets make shapes and elegant, well-thought designs on a page using word and line placement. Poems that can be read several different ways for different meanings are some of my absolute favorites. When I see a poem uniquely formatted in a way I’ve never experienced before, my jaw drops. The poem “Brick Lane” by Wendy Garnier, featured in Yellow Arrow Journal Vol VI, No. 1 RENASCENCE, is a poem constructed of nine fragmented phrases placed in a way that you can read the poem from several directions in multiple different ways.
Another example of interestingly formatted poetry is Hanif Abdurraqib’s blackout poetry. Blackout poetry is the act of taking a page of written work, coloring over the lines in black, and only leaving a few words still visible. The visible words are chosen specifically by the poet to form a short statement. In his collection A Fortune for Your Disaster, Abdurraqib creates a blackout poem from another poem he wrote, making the two poems a kind of call and response. Poets are artists, not just with the words they chose but with their placement of them.
A couple of my favorite poets include Sylvia Plath and Mary Oliver. Plath’s poetry acts as a window into her life and mind. This is evident in her poem “Elm,” where she states, “I am terrified by this dark thing /That sleeps in me; /All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.” Plath’s works are interesting to me because they exhibit the vulnerability of the poet. Oliver’s poetry, on the other hand, offers encouragement and peace. My favorite poem of Mary Oliver’s is “Wild Geese,” which is about offering yourself forgiveness and focusing on the beauty of the world. Oliver talks about how special it is to be a part of the world and relish in the peace of union with the line “Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, /the world offers itself to your imagination, /calls to you like wild geese, harsh and exciting.”
Today, poetry can be found in all kinds of places. The lyrics of songs are a prime example of this. In my opinion, music artists such as Lana Del Rey and Taylor Swift have created emotional lyrics worthy of being deemed poetry. I especially love the journalistic beauty of Lana Del Rey’s song “Hope Is a Dangerous Thing for a Woman like Me to Have - but I Have It,” for the line “They write that I’m happy, they know that I’m not /But at best you can see I’m not sad.” Taylor Swift is known for her songwriting, and the recent rerelease of the song “All Too Well” displays her incredible talent. Swift’s line “And you call me up again just to break me like a promise /So casually cruel in the name of being honest” allows me to feel the deep pain Swift is trying to portray.
Poetry is an art that can be found everywhere and, in my opinion, does not have a set definition. Poetry is just whatever you make it. It’s whatever speaks to you on an emotional, personal level. Something that challenges your feelings or makes you feel heard. It’s a place to feel comforted and a look into someone else’s life. Poetry lets you be vulnerable and gives you something to relate to. It’s deep and moving and meaningful. It’s journalistic and experiential. I feel like Emily Dickinson’s poem “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” showcases this well, because, in her first few lines, she’s speaking directly about her depression: “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, /And Mourners to and fro /Kept treading - treading - till it seemed /That Sense was breaking through -.”
Poetry is important to me because I believe humans long to experience the beauty and art and raw emotion that comes from it. One of my favorite movie quotes regarding poetry comes from Dead Poet’s Society. Robin Williams’s character, John Keating states, “We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”
There is no law when it comes to the subjects of poetry. It is whatever the poet deems meaningful enough to be talked about. Whether it be nature, a past love, the act of growing old, or the idea of sitting beside a cat, the subjects of poetry are powerful in the way they showcase the mind and heart of the artist behind them. I love Ute Carson’s poetry for this reason. She is able to take a simple thing and delve into the emotional framework that makes being human so special. Her poem “Sleeping Beside a Cat” from Listen emphasizes the little pleasures in life: “but he chose my hair as his favorite resting place. /Nose buried in my sparse locks, he purrs /as his soft paws massage the soft strands.”
We live and breathe poetry. Whatever we do, however mundane, can be reimagined, made purposeful, through the magnification lens of poetry. Poetry makes the ordinary something beautiful and important. It emphasizes heartache and love and the emotions behind the simplest of things. The best kind of poem is one that is able to change your perspective on something, one that shows something in a way you haven’t thought of before. This is why I love the poem “Topsoil” by Meg Crane, featured in Yellow Arrow Journal Vol V, No. 3 (Re)Formation:
Now I think
(maybe)
I might be an evergreen.
Now I think
(maybe)
that barren winter earth
could be the perfect place
to plant my roots.
To me, “Topsoil” is a poem about a transformation and a change of perspective toward oneself. Even when we feel hopeless that we aren’t getting far in life, there is evidence that we are still growing.
The amazing thing about poetry is that it’s for everyone. No one is excluded from writing and enjoying it. A poem that is moving is, in my opinion, one of the most meaningful, because it has the potential to change a part of you for the better. Poetry not only exposes the vulnerability of the poet but allows the reader to relate in the most intimate ways.
Rachel Vinyard is an emerging author from Maryland and the fall 2021 publications intern at Yellow Arrow Publishing. She is working toward a BA in English at Towson University and has been published in its literary magazine Grub Street. She was previously the fiction editor of Grub Street and hopes to continue editing in the future. Rachel is also a mental health advocate and aims to spread awareness of mental health issues through literature. You can find her on Twitter @RikkiTikkiSavvi and on Instagram @merridian.official.
Happy National Poetry Month!
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