Coping

I don’t normally talk to the aether about my personal life (although if you’re a poet, you know that poetry is often nothing more than airing out dirty laundry in verse) but today, it’s time to pick open a brand new scab and deal with the pain. Bad metaphor, I know, but you get it.

The first time poetry became a form of therapy for me was in high school, when I wrote a poem about a friend that had died 3 years earlier. Quickly thereafter, my poems turned from the raw pain I never knew how to deal with to delving into the meaning of death and the afterlife.

In the 1950’s and 60’s, a group of poets emerged that comprised what is now called the “Confessional” Movement of poetry. This movement was about the personal life of the poet, not the mountains in the background or unseen Gods/ Goddesses that influence mankind. These poets stripped away the impersonal narrator and used poetry as their diary. This is how I used poetry, how it became my therapy. I used it to express what I had never been able to put into words before.

So here I am, many, many years into the future, and I find myself in the same situation. A short time ago, someone I didn’t call a close friend, but a friend nonetheless, died. I was his supervisor, but we still talked often about writing (he wrote screenplays), and he enjoyed talking about what few posts I have made here on WordPress, giving his feedback and opinions on the various poets and prompts. Work has been so busy and hectic since we heard of his death that no one really had a chance to process what happened. I definitely didn’t.

So the few new posts are dedicated to my friend: one on Sylvia Plath — a Confessional poet — and one writing prompt.