Welcome! - and Naomi Shihab Nye

Welcome to my attempt at a blog! Through this medium, I hope to provide a taste of how poetry has given me the world, and how I hope to give the world back.

For my first post, I feel as though I should provide some brief background about myself. I was born in Plattsburgh, New York, in 1989. It's a small town about an hour away from the Canadian border...you probably have not been there, but if you have, let me know! Our family moved to west Texas when I was about 8-years-old and to Knoxville (where I currently live) when I was 12-years-old.

I currently attend the University of Tennessee-Knoxville where I am an undergraduate in the creative writing program. It has been a long journey to get into this program, as I tried journalism, political science and even thought about law for a while. But here I am, going to school to write and read - and I love it!

I should say a bit about how I became interested and eventually fascinated with poetry. When I was younger, I had always kind of enjoyed writing, but my head was never on straight enough to be serious about it. That is, until I woke up one day and fell in love with life and the world. And it really happened like that. It was as if the proverbial light switch had been flipped on, and my understanding of myself had increased exponentially.

My mother (who is a spectacular writer - and WILL have a book of poetry eventually) showed me a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye - in one of her poetry fits where she piles books in front of me with a child-like gleam in her eyes - called "For Mohammed Zeid of Gaza, Age 15." This is the beginning for me. I knew that I would always write and read poetry after experiencing this poem. The way Nye uses simple, concise diction to weave in and out of figuration is brilliant, and the message is as honest as any poem I have ever encountered. So here it is, the poem to end all poems (in my life, at least). Enjoy!

For Mohammed Zeid of Gaza, Age 15

There is no stray bullet, sirs.
No bullet like a worried cat
crouching under a bush,
no half-hairless puppy bullet
dodging midnight streets.
The bullet could not be a pecan
plunking the tin roof,
not hardly, no fluff of pollen
on October's breath,
no humble pebble in the street.

So don't gentle it, please.

We live among stray thoughts,
tasks abandoned midstream.
Our fickle hearts are fat
with stray devotions, we feel at home
among bits and pieces,
all the wandering ways of words.

But this bullet had no innocence, did not
wish anyone well, you can't tell us otherwise
by naming it mildly, this bullet was never the friend
of life, should not be granted immunity
by soft saying - friendly fire, straying death-eye
why have we given the wrong weight to what we do?

Mohammed, Mohammed deserves the truth.
this bullet had no secret happy hopes,
it was not singing to itself with eyes closed
under the bridge.