WHAT TO SAY TO THOSE WHO THINK YOU’RE A FOOL FOR CHOOSING POETRY
Tell them yes.
Tell them poetry is what chose you.
Tell them
you had a night, once,
just as they did,
when you knelt alone on the cold tiles
and asked the night
to give you a reason for being.
Tell them the answer was your life.
Tell them we are nothing, nothing
without passion,
the wild dark flock
that fills our rooms with joy.
Tell them
you will give the rest of your blazing days
to try to give another life
that moment,
that moment when you opened
to the coldness
and found that the music of your ruin
was too beautiful to ever be destroyed.
Prompt: “A young reader’s email that read, in part, ‘What should I say to those who say I’m being foolish for choosing a life of poetry?’”
—from Rattle #81, Fall 2023
Tribute to Prompt Poems
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Joseph Fasano (from the conversation): “My journey toward poetry was really a journey toward giving in to it. I always scribbled, I always read, and I was sort of saying, ‘You know what, maybe these great questions and these great mysteries are things that I want to explore within the human heart, within the human mind.’ That’s an abridged way of putting it, but it’s been a journey into language and into the human heart as the biggest mystery of all.” (web)
