I remember the day I showed this poem to a group of students I was working with. I was conducting a poetry workshop here in Orlando, hoping to instill a love of words, rhythm, and the great artists of our world to a group of tired, half-stoned, fifteen-year-olds. So I showed them Bukowski-- the much loved, boozed up, whoremonger-- and I asked the all-important question, "Why do you write." The classroom was silent. I had gotten their attention, but they were hesitant to answer such an intimate question. Why do we write? How can we vocalize the reasons for something which, to many of us is as primal and basic as any? I of course turned to my teachers for the answers, to Bukowski and Orwell. In his essay "Why I Write" George Orwell closes with, "Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand." And then they got it. And they scribbled ferociously in their notebooks, possessed by that demon that possessed so many of us in high school—that demon that drove us to study writing, to stay up late into the night with journals, scraps of paper, newspaper and notebooks. “I write because it makes me whole.” “I write because when I do I don’t have to think about my momma or my sister.” “I write because I want to have a future." “I write because all my friends think I’m no good, but when I’m rhyming, I know that I’ll be something one day.” |
Alyssa ShainaWriter, reader, believer. Archives
September 2016
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