"Every poem is a new emotion"

You can't prove me wrong!

I was in a workshop for high school students once and someone said that, “Every poem I write is a new emotion.” I like it!

By putting a hundred thousand millipedes in a blender, scientists are able to extract the parts of them that write the millipede equivalent of poetry. And if you drink that milli-smoothie, you will finally understand their poetry.

If you accept the premise that poetry is inextricable from humanness then, with few exceptions¹, poems are inextricable from our interpretations and reactions to experiences, our subjective responses to reality. They are inextricable from our emotions.

Each poem, therefore, attempts to crystalize each flavor of feeling some kind of way. Each poem is a new emotion.

What’s more, every poem is a different emotional connection between an author and a reader, and that connection is a nigh-infinite combination between two people and their individual responses to reality, like a Tinder match. And maybe the match gets steamy, maybe there’s no chemistry, maybe you decide to go out, maybe they don’t look like their profile picture, maybe they waft pheromones so hard the most boring shit they say is HILARIOUS and INTERESTING, maybe you go out for a while and drift apart naturally, maybe you are better as friends, maybe you have to tell them about your STI exposure, maybe you decide not to tell them about your STI exposure, maybe they start rummaging through your garbage to monitor your daily caloric intake, maybe maybe maybe, yadda yadda yadda, and then one day you’re pregnant and married to William Carlos Williams. Nigh-infinite subjective combinations, some of them even pleasant.

Each poem, new emotion.

Our next live poetry workshop is Thursday June 1st at 8 PM CST. Register here. Who knows, you might even find THE ONE².

1. I am ready to discover the community of sociopath poets.

2. poem. The one poem.