When I was about 13 or 14 I fell in love with poetry. In my 7th grade English the teacher tried her best to instill in us the "love of words". We learned of ballads, limericks. free verses, elegies and the list goes on. I took the bait and read anything I could get my hands on that contained poetry. I'm not sure how it is in "today's" world but "back when I was in school", all the girls passed around poems and most were poems about loneliness or the "he~done~me~wrong" types of poems that showed their anguish or despair over a break~up. I tried my hand at writing poems like this, which was kind of ironic considering I didn't even HAVE a boyfriend that could "do me wrong" in the first place! So, I watched.... I listened... and I FELT what the other girls were going through. I heard their heartbreak and seen their tears...and God only knows I knew what the loneliness felt like. Not the loneliness of not having a boyfriend but the kind of loneliness that seeps down deep in your soul and decides its not ever leaving. Then I wrote or rather I TRIED to write and I gave the silly, naive poems to my friends who were going through the despair of a break~up or any of the other, now forgotten, reasons that I wrote them. After school, I'd come home, go behind my bed where my yellow bean bag was (remember those??!!)..and I wrote ...and wrote. I had notebooks filled with "stuff" I'd write. I came across all these notebooks filled with poems one day. I had tucked them all away and kept them on a top closet shelf. But I've always been my own biggest critic and always will be. As an adult woman now, I sat down on my bed and read the poems over and CRINGED at what I had written so long ago. Ashamed and surely my face was red from embarrassment, I picked up the folder and put it UNDER all the other trash that was in the Kitchen trash can. Now of course, I wish I had them back again, because as silly as they were and we would all agree that none would have certainly never won any literature awards, much like this lil blog itself! But, I had written them with love... for my friends. In my fit of "self~criticism" , I failed to see that . Anyways, I'm ramblin' again, sorry! So movin' right along here .... I loved reading the poems of Emily Dickinson, Louisa May Alcott, and later, came to love the wisdom that Maya Angelou shared with us all. But my first love of poetry came from Helen Steiner Rice. Maybe it was because it was my first REAL poem I had ever just truly sat down to read and really ABSORBED the words that were in front of me. So for Christmas, Ma got me a book of poetry written by Helen Steiner Rice. I treasure that book even today. ( We all have those precious items we'd grab if there was ever a fire, well, this lil book would be one of my items to grab.) Because inside the book, Ma had underlined THIS phrase in one of the poems and wrote it inside the cover of the book for me, "...And she could melt the hardest heart with the sunshine of her smiles" ღღ Thanks for stopping by and letting me share my lil stories with y'all.
My sincerest apologies to my Facebook friends, who have already "seen" this story but I wanted to put it on my blog, to give it a HOME. :) Be good and be pretty and as always.... ✻ღϠ₡ღ✻ God Bless ✻ღϠ₡ღ✻ |
HI! My name is Lori and I am a self~ proclaimed agoraphobic and rarely leave my home. My blog is a place for me to come and embrace my Edith Bunker tendencies and to share a few of the things I love. Stories, recipes and crafts, all with a little humor thrown in along the way! ღღ
Archives
June 2023
Categories |