"The job of both the poet and the poem are to act as snapshots of what it means to be alive. Through the cross sections of emotion and experience, one gets a better sense of the world— that is if they write and read enough of it." -dimitrireyespoet.com
I had to grow into my “poet body” and realize that the work I produced really mattered. When I first began writing I was produced haphazardly just to get my thoughts out and I found myself writing poems with the misconception of what I thought poetry was.
What I’ve learned as years went on was that a poet is more than penning words down on a napkin and it’s more than stringing together some lines with hopes of sounding prolific. A poem is also more than several verses and more than an exercise in the beauty of language. The job of both the poet and the poem are to act as snapshots of what it means to be alive. Through the cross sections of emotion and experience, one gets a better sense of the world— that is if they write and read enough of it.
Here are 5 Ways That You Can be a Better Poet Right Now
1) Consider Social Responsibility
Take the personal oath of responsibility for your work. Know that whatever you are putting on paper your audience will see. You must realize that even if you are writing for yourself, you will read that work again so you can be your audience, too. Know that each poem written by you is a representation of everything that makes your identity, despite the fact that you can allow yourself to fictionalize events in a narrative.
Though you can be writing for yourself, I always encourage poets to share their work. Working in the time and space of experience, poems are visceral and intimate. They should be shown to the public so life can be witnessed and a humanity can be measured. This can come in the way of the reader and the poet experiencing the same sentiment that results in a closeness, or the poet bearing witness about something that the reader knows nothing about. This can result in a newfound closeness, but can also distance the relationship between the audience and the writer as well.
2) Be the Parasite
Writers by nature are parasitic, we’re leeches! We latch onto life in order to feed off of it. We then ingest the experience before expelling our synthesized observations into something prolific and new.
Everything that you come across is nourishment for your synthesizing processes. What you read, what you watch, what you witness, what you do, and what you don’t do are all consumable. This is also why I emphasize self care with all of my students because you are what you feed your senses— as a writer and as a person.
3) Ask Yourself: What is my Purpose?
We are called to the page because this is something we like to do. If you have yourself on writing schedule, if you call yourself a poet, or if you ever hope to write a book, you have to ask yourself why you are doing so.
When you ask yourself why you’re a poet, it has to be more specific than “because I like to write poems.” As I mentioned in the beginning of this blog, poetry is important because we explain to the world what it feels like to be alive. To find your purpose, all you need to do is look at your writing and decide what subjects you write about. It may seem like you’re writing about many things, but all of which you write about can fit under the umbrella of your identity.
As an example, if you write about cigarettes, lattes, and flavored beers, your purpose isn’t to tell the world about cigarettes, lattes, and flavored beers. If you were to tell me, “But Dimitri, I’m telling the world what it’s like to be a hipster,” you’re closer. What you are really revealing with those tropes changes on the tone of your work but can be things like capitalism, millennial culture, addictive behaviors, coping mechanisms, and death wishes.
4) read, Read, READ
I was lucky enough to have public speaker, Baruti Kafele be my school principal in high school. He was a big man with a booming presence and a kind heart. Every morning he would come on the intercom and routinely say, “You must read, read, read, read, and read. Reinforce that reading with more reading, and reinforce that reading with writing.” and many of us, with an eye roll or a huff, would recite that with him by memory.
What we didn’t know at that age was that many of us would later grow to know the importance of that mantra. As for me, it clicked one day while I was researching corn for my Political Anthropology class and it has followed me in my coursework, research, and activism ever since.
So as a poet, you need to read! You need to read lots of poetry and everything that surrounds it. So this includes poetry within the past 100 years, 50 years, 10 years, and 10 months. This includes blogs, interviews, reviews, criticism, and theory about poetry. This also includes not reading poetry at all; prose of all types contribute to your work, too. Don’t forget, as a literary parasite, everything is nourishment.
5) Record Your Story
This is among the heaviest tasks and puts ever opponent akin to Atlas the titan. A part of your social responsibility involves the recording of your family history. Because you began to write, you’ll have the weight of your family’s story on your shoulders if you choose to discuss it. Life, as cyclical as it is fragile, begins and ends. Ask yourself if you know who your great grandparents’ mother or father is? Do you know what they were like? Where were they from? Their occupation? Their name?
Time erases history if it isn’t made permanent on paper. If you are still questioning why you write, by the time this sentence is finished, you should at least consider the idea of preservation as your writer’s purpose.
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