On the Poetry of the Everyday

When you think of poetry, what comes to mind? Perhaps grand, sweeping gestures of love, ruminations on sadness? Perhaps complex, open-ended questions about life, the universe, and what it means to be happy?

Certainly, poetry has room for these topics. Yet, most of our lives are spent a bit closer to earth. We do the laundry, get groceries, write emails, see our friends, feed our pets, and so on.

Poetry—and, really, some of the best poetry—makes room for this too. As poets, we should feel empowered not just to write about the Big Stuff, but also about the everyday.

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Close Study: “This is the Poem” by Arda Collins

Retrieved from her collection Star Lake.

This is the Poem

An illustration of a peach
that says peach at the bottom;
the Armenian word for “bed,”
“angoghin,” which means something more
Like a large cradle that flies
out into a dream or a dark
sleep; several driveways after it rained
in places I’ve lived; made-up scenes
of oceans and savannahs;
late winter with a damp white sky,
God nearby; the time I wanted to jump straight through
my black mind.
Put your cheek
Against an animal’s fur. Tell me what you think about
the different kinds of light
you saw today. You can give them names.
You can hear the end
of time right here inside this cloud,
where there’s a tube of lightning,
a minuscule
revolving echo
like a drive through a tunnel.

I find this poem to be such a wonderful, mystical take on the Ars Poetica—a type of poem that meditates on the art of writing poetry itself. The first part of the poem is actually a sequence of mini-poems connected by semicolons. It says that simple things, like language and drawings and daydreams, are already, themselves, poetry.

Then, the poem offers a twist: two short lines—“my black mind. / Put your cheek”—which interrupts the poem’s flow and marks a transition. The speaker then tells us to consider items in our own daily lives, like the feeling of an animal’s fur and the way that light looks—these, too, are poems.

I find that the collection of images in this poem both haunts and delights. Why? Because Collins has distilled poetry to its most imagistic, showing us how powerful language can be as it evokes the most specific and intimate thought-pictures.

As poets, we can find inspiration in this poem’s celebration of the quiet quotidian. When we pay close attention, what other elements of our day-to-day lives can we find poetry within?

Here are some other poems that dwell on the quotidian:

• “On a Train” by Wendy Cope
• “The Day Lady Died” by Frank O’Hara
• “Mountain Dew Commercial Disguised as a Love Poem” by Matthew Olzmann

Craft Perspective: “The Private Act of Writing Poetry” by Sandra Cisneros

Read Cisneros’ craft essay here: https://lithub.com/sandra-cisneros-on-the-private-act-of-writing-poetry/

I’ve long adored poet Sandra Cisneros and the ways she excavates her own life in poetry. Imagine teenage me sobbing in my bedroom because I’ve just read “One Last Poem for Richard” and felt it as though I’d been through that kind of heartbreak. That’s what fantastic poetry can do: blur the lines between self and other, reminding us all that even our most private experiences are still connected to universal, human ones.

In her craft essay, Cisneros describes poetry as a long internal dialogue she’s having with herself. I wonder how this resonates with you? Do you also view poetry as a room in the soul, the only one where you can let everything out? Or do you have a different relationship? The ways we construct these metaphors are, I think, indications of the ways we write poetry, too.

Cisneros also describes poetry as “a refuge from the mundane, an invitation to the sacred.” Compare this idea with Arda Collins’ poem above. When we slow down and focus on the everyday, I think we turn the mundane into the sacred—because, really, poetry invites us to celebrate our own experiences, which are fundamental human experiences. It’s in that sharing and common ground that something sacred emerges.

So, try slowing down and examining the moment-to-moment. Write tercets out of tedium. Quatrains from the quotidian. By employing metaphor, imagery, and other poetic devices, you may find that even the simplest topics, like sending emails or doing the dishes, will connect you to the bigger picture in ways you haven’t yet realized.

Resources on the Poetry of the Everyday

Check out these articles as you craft your own plain, pedestrian, unpretentious poems.

• Using Imagery
• Employing Metaphor
• Show, Don’t Tell Writing