Jennifer Perrine
Being a writer means I've got one more resource for enduring the challenges and suffering that life might throw at any of us. I won't say "poetry saved my life," which feels like an overstatement--my poems have never dragged me from burning buildings or performed emergency surgery or grabbed my wrist at the last minute, just before I fell over a cliff.
Except, of course, they have done all of those things, metaphorically. In the midst of systemic violence and injustice and hateful rhetoric, the process of writing gets the inferno of swirling anger out of my mind and onto the page. It helps to heal whatever fear I've let fester. It pulls me back from the brink of despair.
That's not the best thing, though. The best thing is when someone tells me that something I've written has helped them endure, helped them feel less alone. As Nikki Giovanni says, that's the true revolution.
Except, of course, they have done all of those things, metaphorically. In the midst of systemic violence and injustice and hateful rhetoric, the process of writing gets the inferno of swirling anger out of my mind and onto the page. It helps to heal whatever fear I've let fester. It pulls me back from the brink of despair.
That's not the best thing, though. The best thing is when someone tells me that something I've written has helped them endure, helped them feel less alone. As Nikki Giovanni says, that's the true revolution.
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