"My poems are the most important because they tell me more about myself than anything else" (Chambers, 202).
Throughout her pillow books, Cordelia uses poetry not only as a vehicle with which to convey her feelings but also as a means of sorting out confusion within herself in order to come to an understanding of the self and an acceptance of the circumstance (i.e. when she writes about Will leaving her).
I can most definitely relate to the above quote; for me, the writing of poetry is most useful in times of uncertainty when I am not quite sure who I am and where I am headed. My poems reveal to me the underlying emotions that may not be readily apparent but which show through clearly when I articulate them in the form of a poem.
The way that Cordelia uses poetry is vast and begs for a larger discussion... I am opening the floor ;)
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Poetry is like talking to a pychologist,except you write down things instead of talking to someone about them. Some people find that talking to a stranger about your thoughts, feeling and problems, is uncomfortable and odd. A diary or pillow book on the other hand, will no judge you and you can write your innermost thoughts and feelings.
ReplyDeleteAside from going to Ms. Martin, Cordelia wrote poems, or as she called them "mopes." She went through a lot: her mother died at a young age, She was in love with Will,her father and aunt Doris decided to get married, and she even had an affair with her boss who was 20 years older than her. That is a LOT to deal with for anyone, let alone an individual going through puberty and having a sexual life.
She went through so much by the time she was 17, that the only thing to do was to sit down and write a big pillow book along with poetry to soothe her, and make some sense out of all the insanity she has gone through.
One thing I really liked about her experiments with poetry is that it took awhile before she was able to call one an actual "poem". I think that poetry is probably a pretty common way for teens to feel like they're communicating their feelings with someone, especially important at a time when "Nobody understands." I mean, I wrote awful poems when I was a teen, and in reading them this year I was at once somewhat embarrassed by how immature and sloppy they were, but also shocked at the way I was thinking at the time, the things that bothered me, and how I expressed them. I feel like once you get out of the teen years, it's impossible to get back into your mindset, and you tend to forget what you were like, who you were. Teenage poetry has its place.
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