Why Write Poetry?

Abstract

© 2011 bridges association Willa: I started writing poetry as a teenager as a way to express what I felt most deeply. I could be brutally honest about my thoughts and feelings. It wasn’t for others. Only later did I understand that poetry could be a vehicle for communication and social change. As a citizen of the world, I do believe I must bear witness to the immoral, to the unspeakable horror that humankind is capable of inflicting on the earth and itself. Poetry’s precise, musical, metaphor-infused language can get to that place beyond the illusion of the objective, to “true” words. My early poems were a way to soothe my unhappiness. Now I know that anything deeply felt or observed can become the genesis of a poem. When I feel fully engaged in my life, poems are more likely to come than when I am in despair. Adrienne Rich has talked about writing out of a “radical happiness.” She has said, “Real social transformation, real change has to come out of a love of life and a love of the world...” Of course, I don’t believe poetry alone can be a change agent, but it can incite the necessary conversation.