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      October 11, 2023What to Say to Those Who Think You’re a Fool for Choosing PoetryJoseph Fasano

      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.

      from #81 - Prompt Poems

      Joseph Fasano

      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?’”

      “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.”

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