As a child I devoured poetry: Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Brontë. How do I love thee, let me count the ways, Barrett Browning’s flowered words were one reason that I favored female poets, However, I too had my share of a few male favorites: Emerson, Yeats and Frost.
In middle school I recited Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken. I can still see myself standing in front of the classroom wearing my bestest clothes: pleated navy skirt, crisp starched white top that mami had ironed just so, black tights and classic patent leather Mary Janes. The picture of perfection, I remember nervously starting on that first verse*:
two roads diverged in a yellow wood
and sorry I could not travel both
and being one traveler, long I stood
and looked down one as far as I could
to where it bent in the undergrowth
* find full text here:
Enunciating each word, every syllable as if it carried a life of its own, I was captivated as it seemed only a child could be. And so years later as life experiences continued to shape my psyche, newly developed perspectives dictated the poets I’d prefer. Then after saving some money, I began to travel overseas and found my eyes truly opening to a new world. Encountering different cultures, languages, seeing the beauty in these other places became the catalyst for me to revisit that decades dormant enthusiasm of writing. Climbing a mountain in Peru, hiking a glacier in Iceland, kissing a camel in Egypt, these experiences awakened a curiosity to explore my creative side with writing poetry.
Realizing that the authors of my youth no longer held the same allure, I began to seek out writers who resonated with me, those who looked like my people and the folks I’d grown up around. Those beautiful, strong, resilient women and men whose stories begged to be told.
How ecstatic was I, as an adult (albeit belated) to discover this colorful palette of poets and writers: Esmeralda Santiago, Julia de Burgos, Maya Angelou, Pedro Pietri, James Baldwin, Miguel Algarín, to name a few. Mil gracias, I am so grateful to you and for you…it is because of you that I now dare call myself a
Poet
Click here to check out my poems.
