Words Are More Than Just, Words

I’m the type of person that can get hit with a powerful punch and not cry, yet a wounding word can pierce my soul and make me break down into tears. The truth is I have found out that words are much more than just words; they’re the essence of happiness and of hatred. Perhaps that is where my love and dedication for poetry started over a decade ago. I found shelter in simple words that put together created a small world where I could express myself.
It’s rather depressing to see that nowadays people don’t give value to words. Everything has to be neatly specified and signed in a contract because there is no way of knowing if the person will keep their promise. Hundreds of years ago giving your word to someone followed by a shake of hands was more than enough to seal a deal.
I enjoy reading Shakespeare because his words are magical. I find it mindboggling how well his words fit together and how well they transmit what he was trying to say. Back when I was a freshman in high school I remember my literature teacher made us memorize a small part from Romeo and Juliet. To this day I haven’t forgotten it and that’s where my love for poetry and words started.
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”
That is one of my favorite lines from the play; not only does it sound beautiful but it also makes the reader stop and think. You can almost feel Juliet’s distress about having fallen in love with a man that is supposed to be her enemy. In today’s world we still insist on labeling people and we don’t realize – or don’t want to – that a simple label can have a tremendous impact on somebody’s life.
If we start looking at poetry we will find that there are techniques, patterns, rhythm, and schemes that ought to be followed. Some might think there shouldn’t be any guidelines when writing poetry and I tend to think that way as well. To me poetry is simply beauty materialized in words. It’s the ability of taking your feelings and pasting them on a piece of a paper. It is almost like telling a story but adding rhymes (if you wish).
I like thinking about Theodore Geisel or Dr. Seuss as he is best known. Early in his career when he wrote And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street, he was turned down 27 times until it was finally published. Many writers would have given up after a few rejections, I know I would have. Even though he wrote mainly for children, his words always carried some type of message. For example in Horton Hatches the Egg, the story is centered on Horton (an elephant) who has promised Mayzie (a bird) to sit on her egg for a short period of time. Mayzie never returned and everybody in the jungle started to make fun of Horton yet he refused to leave the egg because he had made a promise.
Horton keeps repeating: “I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An elephant’s faithful one-hundred percent”. In my opinion this simple line engulfs everything that words should mean: a promise.
Sadly, people will keep taking words for granted and one day they probably won’t mean a thing. Regardless of that, I will keep admiring the works of past poets and writers and continue to make my own attempt at it.