Oh

[greenstorm]

Housing Shortage

I tried to live small.
I took a narrow bed.
I held my elbows to my sides.
I tried to step carefully
And to think softly
And to breathe shallowly
In my portion of air
And to disturb no one.

Yet see how I spread out and I cannot help it.
I take to myself more and more, and I take nothing
That I do not need, but my needs grow like weeds,
All over and invading; I clutter this place
With all the apparatus of living.
You stumble over it daily.

And then my lungs take their fill.
And then you gasp for air.

Excuse me for living,
But, since I am living,
Given inches, I take yards,
Taking yards, dream of miles,
And a landscape, unbounded
And vast in abandon.

You too dreaming of the same.



And a second, untitled

Here’s an old list.

Things I’m not sure if I’m good at them anymore:
• Being needed
• Remembering birthdays
• Knowing what I’m good at exactly
• Allowing myself to do what I really want to do
• Protecting myself from vulnerability
• Being excited about everything
• Losing my fear of being wrong
• Knowing where people hurt

Naomi Replansky

Comments

[greenstorm]

I posted this before I knew about your potential other living option; that quote feels like it suits that post you made about SR.

[yarrowkat]

doesn't it, though? :-D

[greenstorm]

Right?!

I've been going through a ton of poetry this month, cannoning out two or three a day from my archives on fb and screencapping a bunch from that lovely instagram group you referred me to. So much breadth to human experience, and yet still so much that can fit well. Amazing.

[yarrowkat]

there's so much good stuff out there. i love that poetry account because it puts things in front of me i'd probably never have otherwise found, and so much of it is great. and good at that personal/specific-to-universal-experience slide that feels so good in poems.

[greenstorm]

Yes! Like greatpoets on lj used to. And now Instgram is sending me ads for other poetry accounts, which is the highest use of advertising.

Your language on that slide is interesting. I'm going to think about it a bit.

[yarrowkat]

ha, that is indeed a good use for advertising. every now and then they get it right.

personal-to-universal? is totally A Thing in literary criticism and how poetry is taught. it can be a matter of making a detail so specific that everyone recognizes something different from their own experience in it; that detail immediately becomes a metaphor for those things tho the writer has no idea what the specific reader will see. i rely on it a lot in my writing.