Poetry did not save my life. It frustrates and complicates life. My emotional experience of writing a poem is akin to maneuvering tricky Venetian window blinds; I struggle. Sometimes, I must undo movement in order to make progress. I cannot articulate this. No one else can tell you or show you how to do it—you have to feel it, then it just clicks. And “success” doesn’t necessarily mean you can do it again the next time. It’s always a striving, always a surprise if it works.
Poetry did not save Ariana Benson’s life, either. I know this because she told me so. The first night I met her: June 11th—inside Opening Circle, the orientation of the Cave Canem Retreat, the “Home of Black Poetry,” in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. She arrived late and sat beside me in an open seat I was praying empty—for space to slump into as the evening went on and the caffeine did less. A glass jar was passed around; folded pieces of paper within revealed which workshop group we were randomly assigned to. Ariana plucked the letter “A”; I selected the same.
