As I've hit a writer's block the past couple of months I scrounged around for some of my old class notebooks. Junior year at Westminster I took Dr. Swerdlow's poetry class, one of my favorite courses during my 4 years of university. In my class journal, I'd scribble down some of his best quotes that helped to shape the creativity of my writing. Looking through the archives I was reminded that blank pages are intimidating, poetry is like religion, writing isn't always comfortable but it slows us down when everything else seems a bit hectic. And for this, I'm thankful. We can never be perfect at what we do, sometimes we'll hate our work and others won't appreciate it, but we should never give up on what we love just because we've hit a brick wall; just find a different way to break through it :)
SWERDLOW QUOTES:
“Nothing is as intimidating as a blank page.”
“Poetry is not unlike religion. . .pairing suffering with beauty.”
“Take time to reflect on what you’ve been doing, if your poems can slow you down and allow you to dwell in that moment. . .be thankful.”
“Maybe it’s not the comfortable poem to write, but maybe you get more texture.”
“It may be that you didn’t put enough of the world into your poem for us to see it”
In November country,
strangers sip coffee
beneath umbrellas
bound
for one-lane dirt roads,
and grey, impending skies.
Yellowed novel pages,
autumn's brown debris,
rest between knobby knees
bumping against a bus window,
her awful bare bones draped
with whiskey shivers.
His green army jacket
conceals a black suit;
stained with mustard
and cigarette burns,
it smells of cinnamon and patchouli,
remnants from a visit
to his grandma's.
Exchanging green glass whispers,
they joke about the weather,
as it pitters, patters,
and don't question
where he's going
or where she's been.
xx Hill
