Hello There!
I took my first airplane ride when I was six years old.
I remember looking out the window of the plane and seeing the white stratocumulus below us. I wanted to go outside and bounce on them. I knew that clouds were not solid, but they looked like a fluffy, bouncy quilt.
Looking at the world through fresh eyes, even if you have been around the block a few times, is the key to writing anything that moves readers.
This week I began an essay about how there is no such thing as a bad poem. It’s currently a sprawling mess and is in danger of turning into a philosophy of poetry manifesto.
But the key message is that the point of poetry should be to make others and ourselves feel something. We should write for readers, not for poetry editors.
The only way I know how to write something that means anything to anyone else is to describe what I see as if I’m seeing it for the first time. My goal in my poetry is to be perpetually a curious child, albeit one trapped in the body of a middle-aged man.
Be the weird you want to see in the world!
Cheers,
Jason
P.S. Later today, you will receive the last letter in the Consciousness series Nathan Davila, and I have been working on.
I just got off FaceTime with my dear friend. She told me her husband had read my free verse “And Yet I Fight, I Stand”, and it resonated deeply within him. Yes, we compose for our readers, and that’s why many of us are on Substack and other self publishing platforms. Freedom to publish!