To All the Boys I've Loved Before by Mayda Del Valle

Poetry that Doesnt Suck

Postcards by Sarah Kay

I had already fallen in love with far too many postage stamps.
When you appeared on my doorstep wearing nothing but a postcard promise.
No, appear is the wrong word. Is there a word for sucker punching someone in the heart? Is there word for when you’re sitting at the bottom of a roller coaster and you realize that the climb is coming, that you know what the climb means, that you can already feel the flip in your stomach from the fall before you’ve even moved? Is there a word for that?

There should be.

You can only fit so many words in a postcard. Only so many in a phone call, only so many into space before you forget that words are sometimes used for things other than filling emptiness. It is hard to build a body out of words – I have tried.

We have both tried.

Instead of lying your head against my chest, I tell you about the boy who lives downstairs from me. Who stays up all night long practicing his drum set. The neighbors have complained. They have busy days tomorrow, but he keeps on thumping through the night convinced, I think, that practice makes perfect. Instead of holding my hand, you tell me about the sandwich you made for lunch today. How the pickles fit so perfectly against the lettuce. Practice does not make perfect.

Practice makes permanent.

Repeat the same mistakes over and over and you don’t get any closer to Carnage Hall, even I know that. Repeat the same mistakes over and over and you don’t get any closer! You never get any closer. Is there a word for the moment you win tug of war? When the weight gives and all that extra rope comes tumbling towards you. How even though you’ve won you still wind up with muddy knees and scratches on your hands.

Is there a word for that? I wish there was.

I would have said it. When we were finally alone together on your couch, neither one of us with anything left to say. Still now, I send letters into space. Hoping that some mailman somewhere will track you down and recognize you from the descriptions in my poems. That he will place the stack of them in your hands and tell you “There is a girl who still writes you. She doesn’t know how not to.”

This is honestly one of my all time favorite  poems, for multiple reasons. One of the main ones being the simplicity of the words, the pureness of the tone; Sarah Kay, is a master at painting pictures for the broken hearted. She has this way with her words that caresses your brain stem and brings up memories and pulls, tugs at buried emotions. She puts words to the unspeakable and complex nature of relationships. The horribly confusing and frustrating quietness that can creep through homes, the silent killer of marriages and friendships. Sarah (in all of her poems) has a certain soft mood that envelopes  the reader in a blurred, warm world only to violently crash reality on their heads with relatable metaphors and imagery.

This poet has a way with words, and most certainly doesn't suck.

Not With a Fizzle, But With a Bang

I love when books take you on a journey. I think the most amazing thing in the world is being taken away from your reality by a book that teaches lessons, takes breaths, has wild adventures, forbidden ideals and philosophy beyond comprehension. Fahrenheit 451, at least for me, has been a journey from the start. Although the whole of the book is utterly fascinating and could be analyzed endlessly, I would like for the moment to focus on the end of this piece of literature.

I wonder how it would feel, to be wrapped up in a drama, so plastic and unreal that an atomic blast is the only thing that would wake you up. I wonder what those people thought in their last fiery moments before the blaze obliterated their every sense of self. And for Montag to watch that paper thin society that he had known most of his life go up in such splendor and color; just enough to impress the culture underneath its heat. Montag must push through these ashes and create information, knowledge and history through the embers.

Montag and his band of brothers become the books, the soul surviving members of an unaccepting hateful society, with plans to rebuild and prosper the men head back to the city. All this for some books.

But no it's so much more than that. Its knowledge, its prevention of past mistakes and the evolution of humanity in a decent direction. Books bring so much more than a good story. They bring light to wrong doings, quiet serenity to hectic lives, information, data, material, instruction, enlightenment, propaganda, numbers, letters, change. Through flowery language and harsh words books have altered the world. And that is something worth fighting for.

"There was a silly damn bird called a Phoenix back before Christ: every few hundred years he built a pyre and burned himself up. He must have been first cousin to Man. But every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the ashes, he got himself born all over again. And it looks like we're doing the same thing, over and over, but we've got one damn thing the Phoenix never had. We know the damn silly thing we just did. We know all the damn silly things we've done for a thousand years, and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it, some day we'll stop making the goddam funeral pyres and jumping into the middle of them. We pick up a few more people that remember, every generation." (163)

Twiggy