I’m best known for comics and films, but here I am writing poems again. You can read about the importance of poetry in my life in my 2018 “Thanks, Poetry” essay for the Poetry Foundation. Other recent publications include I BELONG TO YOU / MOTHERLAND and “Book Club.”
Lord help me, I’m writing poetry again. It’s a terrible year, and somehow verse feels like a proper response, a way to grapple with emotional turmoil with the most efficiency and directness. Today I’m thinking about haiku and giving myself the challenge to focus on the classical elements by including a reference to the natural world, an exploration of a specific, tactile moment, and a instant of quiet revelation. Here’s today’s result, inspired by what I saw on my morning walk.
No hawk no, squirrel–
Just a bushy, severed tail
Curled in fresh cut grass.
Just a little stunned to have an essay in Poetry Magazine this month — which includes excerpts of my high school poetry!
The magazine has a feature called “The View from Here” in which it gets folks who aren’t generally known for their poetry to talk about the meaning of poetry in their lives. So I dug into my old high school notebooks and read through dozens of my old poems. Hoo boy! It was harrowing and fun and ultimately opened my eyes to how important poetry really has been in my development as a writer and a human being.