A Journal Written for a High School English Assignment
What a poem should and should not be
Inspired by Kevin Reese
A poem should be a story. Never a story of oppressive comfort. It should not be a story we already know, a story that’s falsely been taught, or a story that romanticizes one’s view on life while overshadowing the stories that we need to hear.
A poem should be the absent stories. The ones that resist the poems of fragility, comfort, and romanticization of oppressive and prominent voices.
So what stories do people need to hear?
The stories of heartbreak. The stories that leave blood on the streets and echo wails in the face of distress. The stories threaten white comfort, threaten the prominent narrative, and threatens the romanticization of societal life. They should cause the audience to look out a window — peering out into the actual world, where not everything is about butterflies and happiness, but a place where inequality benefits some and harms others.
These stories of harm need to be shared. Poems can share those stories. So we don’t want poems that take away from those narratives — that overshadow them. We don’t want poems that leave the audience walking away feeling the same way they felt before reading it.
We want poems that push. Push the boundaries of one’s mind and push them to step outside of their comfort zone to think about life in a new way. To think about their life in a new way.
A poem doesn’t need to be revolutionary in its description. In it’s words or in it’s tone. It can be revolutionary in its message alone. This is why poems should capture the messages of those wishing to resist oppression. Those who have little room to share their voices in normal lights.
Poems should also be the happy medium of
Interpretation.
It should be mystical — something that doesn’t say “I’m being killed”, but still says “I’m being killed”. Something that speaks power, and lives in the mind of the reader for days. Something that lives as a thought, and soon becomes action.
A poem shouldn’t leave interpretation so far as to the majority, though.
A poem doesn’t give those who don’t experience the narrative the opportunity to interpret the experience. It gives them the opportunity to understand. To learn. To see.
See the water we all swim in. Because, like fish, can you recognize water if you live in it? Can you recognize something you’ve been so used to seeing? Can you recognize the tragedy in normality?
A poem can. So let’s give poems to those who need that opportunity. The opportunity to share their story. To share their words. To share their life.
