“If a poem hasn’t ripped apart your soul: you haven’t experienced poetry.”
-Edgar Allen Poe

It’s such a therapeutic thing for me. I know I’ve said it before, but seriously when my mind feels like it’s spiralling inward, I just try to focus on copying down poems into a journal and it calms me. It centers me. My emotions are no longer fluctuating sporadically, but rather are at the mercy of whatever I am reading and writing in that moment. I zone out and feel whatever the poet wants me to feel, and I absolutely love it. I love it so damn much.

I cooked dinner and drank wine with a friend who is also a fan of poetry last night, and she recommended some poets for me to check out. I wasn’t a huge fan of all of them, but one stood out to me once I started doing some digging–Lang Leav. I had read some of her stuff before, but I never truly immersed myself in her work. Until today.

And holy shit, I am enamored. Her poetry is almost too emotionally powerful for me to read sometimes–it’s insane! I have actually had to sit back and close my journal a few times because I needed to take another minute or two to consider what I had just read.

Small detail, I rarely read an entire poem before I decide to write it down. I tend to read just the title and first few lines, then I start copying it down. This makes it that much more powerful as I figure out what it’s really about as I go along. Some poems take a twist that I didn’t expect, and some are exactly what I expect them to be. I am constantly baffled by poetry’s ability to fluctuate so heavily.

I also don’t just copy down every poem I see. I am actually fairly critical of the things I want to dedicate my time and energy to copying down. They have to make me feel and I have to find a way to really relate to them right now. So lately, I haven’t had any inclination whatsoever to write down any sappy love poems even though I’ve read some truly beautiful ones. They’re not what I want to read right now.

So anyways, here’s some poems that I felt like sharing today. Some are from Lang Leav and the other are from my favorite, Erin Hanson (or “e.h.”).

Enjoy!

xx – A