Why I Cringe at my Own Poetry.

    I started writing Love Between Darkness when I was 15. I was in my sophomore year of high school and started writing poetry to escape the monotony of daily life. My first poems were Instagram style prose: short, vapid, and basic in syntax and diction. At the time I really thought I was a savant. I would tell my friends and my family that I was a poet. They were kind enough to be gracious with me and read my lackluster poetry with an open mind and a touch of affirmation. It is from their kindness that my love for writing found root and continues to this day. I would write day in and day out, at any available chance. I wrote about my life growing up in the hospital, about crushes I would never attain, dreams I wished could be true, and the pains of social and emotional isolation. By the time I realized I had enough poetry to fill a book, I had over 216 poems that spanned 5 years of my life.

    It is strange looking back at that previous work. How poetry that I was so proud of back then, seems so lackluster and vapid to me now. As if the person who I was, and the man that I am now are complete strangers. The feeling of publishing a book and releasing it to the general public amplifies this strange feeling of discontentment 10-fold. It is one thing to grow up as an edgy teenager writing dark Instagram poetry. It is a different beast entirely, to look back on your previous work and attempt to organize it into a cohesive and palatable unit.

    Even now, though it has only been 1 year since I released Love Between Darkness, that sense of discontentment and contempt for my previous work is hard to shake off. I read Love Between Darkness and critic it as if I am a stranger. "He really should have used this word instead of that one" or "That line is a couple of syllables too long and it breaks the flow of the poem". Unfortunately - or perhaps fortunately - for me, once a book has been published and distributed, there is no going back. My work will always be available to be read, loved, laughed at, and critiqued by anyone with 10 dollars and free afternoon.

    Don't get me wrong. I am proud of my work. I would not have published my first book if I thought it was a waste of peoples' time. And yet... I cannot help but to scratch my head and think about everything I could have done differently. Every word, every metaphor and every allusion I could have made better if I was just a little bit older, and perhaps, just a bit wiser.

    I drew inspiration from this feeling and incorporated it into my newest book Between Dark Horizons. When I started my second book, I had hit a rough patch in life and seriously contemplated self harm. I was lost, depressed, and I felt like I had burned out and become worthless. I wrote many poems about how God had abandoned me. I would lament my life and write about my suffering. But as time passed and my collection of new poems grew, I found that I had not simply written about my suffering; I had written through it.

    I had come to terms with all that has happened. In the darkest time of my life, I found light and peace as time went on. The last section of Between Dark Horizons tilted Poisons and Truth, serves as an epilogue for the year, that I spent in misery. I even wrote The Pauper (p134) as an extension and a counterpoint to An Age Old Lullaby (p60-61). This also holds true for The Reaper's Epilogue (p135-137) and the section titled The Reaper (p1-6) It is strange to read your works about vanity and how hopelessness will last forever, after you have found peace, joy, and God once again.

    I think that means that I have grown, both as a poet, and as a man. Lord willing, one day I might cringe at Between Dark Horizons, just because my 3rd book will be even better than the last.