Wringing It Out

Poetry.

Although I have been told that my writing has a poetic ring to it, I have never indulged in the process of writing poetry itself before last Sunday. I always got how free verse poetry was appealing. I saw it as lax and compliant, a twist in fluent speech. I understood it, but I'll still say this: There's a madness about the lack of rhyme and consistency of concrete syllable count, that I had felt structure was absolutely loose and quiescent, obliging only to the mind of the poet. I'm still getting the hang of things, and if ever there were truly a correlation between poetry and bicycling, I think I would understand it, because to write poetry and to bike you need that smooth glide and control till all you feel is the euphoria of the wind in your ears and hair.

I love metaphors. Maybe this is why I love metaphors:

There is emotion (a shadow of it, a sliver of it filtering through a gap of curtain, or maybe a reeling dream of it) you can't express in limited, literal words that it becomes marginally inscrutable. Indecipherable, and utmost enigmatic. But there are other words, ways, and the crooked yet pure excuse of poetry, to elude descriptions seemingly too vapid and hackneyed and instead to make up out of this world explanations by calling on stars and space and blood and butterflies without (entirely) losing your hold on the ground and the thorough coherence of literacy.

Poetry is a stifled cry, an episode of improvised, muffled chokes as the blood pooling down around your feet throttles you free.

I would also like to direct you to the most recent (as of now) blog post of Ms. Laini Taylor, which she posted three days ago and which I was ecstatic to be notified of just minutes ago. Laini Taylor is a phenomenal writer and blogs about a metaphor involving writing a novel.