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Hi hi and welcome to my new-ish newsletter of field notes which I’m affectionately calling The Everywhere Poem. I love a lot of poems - the written kind, the spoken kind, the singing kind, and also just the kind that has no text attached until we give language to it. One time I was brainstorming some reflection activities for adults with an art teacher and we thought up this delightful activity that I knew folks would enjoy. But I wondered aloud if they ‘d be like, “Well that was fun but I don’t know why we did that lol.” “Oh, we will just do some meaning making and it’ll be fine,” the art teacher replied. Oh my god, the synapses that synapsed in my brain at that moment! Meaning making. Meaning making! In my completely made up poet job description I wanted to promptly add “meaning making” to primary duties. Maybe, actually, it is the only duty. In classrooms with new poets, I often bring in some oranges. We define orange, the fruit: a round, sweet-to-tart edible citrus fruit produced by the evergreen Citrus × sinensis tree. But then we also define it using our senses: the sharp smell, the brightness of the peel, the soft layers. We start bringing in our memories, making connections. And the orange becomes a broken, juicy bloom; the smell of your middle school lotion; the juicy freedom of summer; round, good fortune; a new year opening. Poetry becomes our sixth sense, a way of understanding the facts. It tells us why; it makes meaning. Poetry is a big word, even in the fine arts sense. Formally, there are many kinds of poems I don’t write or read or even enjoy that much. Many people are shocked when I say this, but it’s only because poetry is taught to us as though it is a small, specific thing—when in reality it is an enormous concept, much like music. No one likes all kinds of music. And I suppose if I was a musician I’d be the kind of musician who was like, shhhh I love this song and the song would be the sound of stepping on frozen grass. I’d be like, omg play it again and it would be the sound of you laughing. In the world of writing, what I share most these days wouldn’t even be filed under poetry anymore; it’s length and look and general narrative flavor has most often been sorted into prose. I used to feel conflicted and self-conscious about being between genres, but those days are long gone, baby. Folks can call it what they want. What I’m referring to is whatever comes before the words hit a page. A way of seeing. My favorite poetry is the one existing in real life. If you look close enough, you’ll find figurative language when the fog lifts, you’ll hear the rhyme of two parts of your life resonating with each other, and you’ll definitely pick up on repetition, because the universe is always sending us messages, and then sending it again and again and again The everywhere poem: the one you are in at this moment, not on this screen but wherever you are, whoever you’re with, in the season of life you’re alive in, lined with whatever beautiful details you’re collecting. You don’t need an MFA to write it. You’re writing it right now. So thanks for being here on my mailing list and being along for the ride that is this new newsletter. I intend for it to be a journal of field notes to scribble in, which will also be a public practice of letting go of perfection. Thank you in advance for grace with errors, bad writing, and half-baked ideas. I’ll also include updates on what I’m working on, as well as some bits of beauty I’ve encountered/think you might enjoy. Email newsletters can be kind of awkward and quiet for me, so please don’t be a stranger; feel free to reply or say hi! May all that you mean be made ~
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