Sincerely, Brenna

Dear Ms. Kay,

My name is Brenna and I am a 17-year-old high school senior. Please forgive me for my formality because although I feel like I know you from your poetry, (that is already a testament to how talented of a writer and poet you are) and thus simply call you “Sarah” in my head, I know that we are not on a first name basis. I am also a writer and a poet, in fact I am a newly published poet and soon-to-be published again poet, so maybe one day we will cross paths and become on a first name basis. Until then, Ms. Kay, I wanted to share with you how much I appreciate and admire you.

          You are essentially the reason that I am a poet today. You probably hear that a lot from all your fans, but for me, that is no exaggeration. I was in eighth grade when I discovered you. My eighth grade English teacher used a YouTube video of one of your performances as the introduction to our poetry unit that year. It was a video of you performing your poem “Hands.” From the moment my first viewing of that video was over, I was a fan of yours and poetry’s. I have been not only a fan of poetry, but also a poet myself, ever since. In fact, as I pen these words to you, I am trying so hard to sound poetic and impress you so that if you do ever read this, afterwards, you will feel that it was worthwhile to do so. 

          The reason I’m sharing all of this with you is not only for the fact that you inspired and still do inspire me, but the fact that you took a 13-year-old girl who HATED poetry, I mean HATED Ms. Kay, and made her LOVE it! To this day, I still don’t know how you did that, but you did. In fact, you did it so well that I am now addicted to poetry! I’m so addicted that I call it one of my biggest passions and can’t stop writing it! I submit my poems to every poetry contest I can find. That is actually how I got my first poem published last year. I was taking a creative writing class as one of my electives at school and my teacher informed us about this online student poetry contest. At that point, I already had a huge vault of poems that I had written just sitting in a folder titled “Poems” in my iPhone notes so I decided to submit one. This was a lot harder than I imagined Ms. Kay! I got a very minuscule taste of how hard it must be for Taylor Swift to decide what songs make it onto her new album. The decision about what poem to submit wasn’t hard because I had so many to choose from though. It was actually quite the opposite. It was hard because one of the submission requirements was that the poem had to be 20 lines or less. 20 lines seems like a lot until you go through your vault or archive of poems and realize that you don’t know how to be concise! Granted, my inability to be concise was nothing new to me, I just didn’t realize that it was implementing itself into my poetry as well.

          Before I started writing poetry, all I had ever written were stories: short stories, chapters of novels, personal narratives, you name it and I wrote them. With stories, you don’t have to be concise - unless of course they’re an assignment for school in which case you will most definitely have a word and/or page limit. It sucks as a student, but given that I also want to be a middle school English teacher, I know that I will likely be enforcing them too. Regardless, I hadn’t had much practice with being concise before. I am a word nerd who loves the English language and writing so I use a lot of words. Why shouldn’t I? Who can stop me? But when I went deep diving for a poem that would actually qualify for submission to this contest, I had a hard time finding one that was 20 lines or less! I knew that I tended to gravitate towards and write narrative poetry because I am first and foremost a storyteller, whether that be through poetry or not, I just didn’t realize that I was being so long-winded in my poetry too. Ultimately, I did find a short enough poem, but because my options were so limited, it definitely wasn’t the one I would’ve submitted had I had more choices. I didn’t think it was my best poem by a long shot, yet it turned out to be the very first piece of writing that I ever got officially published. That just goes to show that beauty truly is in the eyes of the beholder. My poem was published by Appelley Publishing in their 2020 Rising Stars Collection. Here is the poem.

The Back Road

You don’t know what it’s like to walk this road

This winding path of twists and turns that lead you astray 

Only to find yourself in the dark... all alone

But the signs pointed to the light

You don’t know what it’s like to walk this road

The turns are misleading

Right is left

And left is right

One wrong step and you find yourself in a ditch

Clawing your way out only to find

The heap of dirt has been falling back in the whole time

You don’t know what it’s like to walk this road

With so many stop signs

That let you go

And so many speed bumps that seem impossible to get over

And when you do

You stumble and fall

I promise you I have so many much better poems than that, but the more I read that one since it’s been published, the more I think it’s not so bad. Is it bad, however, that I have to convince myself to like my own poem?

          I am getting another poem published by Appelley Publishing this year. I’d like to share that one with you too. It was inspired by the movie The Upside. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that movie, but if you haven’t, I definitely recommend it! It stars Nicole Kidman and Kevin Hart and is so uplifting, funny, and heartwarming. Anyway, here is my poem inspired by it.

Paralyzed Heart

Though his limbs were stricken numb

Paralyzed not was his heart

Until fear grew so irrational

He let it go cold

A few letters

One call

One date

And that fateful night can’t be called anything but fate

An amateur to matters of the heart

She took his and tore it apart

The wheelchair was a sight she just could not bare

But all fared well for her beauty and opinions were not rare

She didn’t deserve him

After all they only met on a whim

And though she had not a bad bone

Her judgment and fear turned him to stone

Though once alive and beating with enthusiasm

His heart could no longer fathom

The possibility that a man like he

Was worthy of a love for all eternity

Like his limbs, stricken numb

Paralyzed too was his heart

Only until you was it reawaken and made anew

Given back its enthusiasm that did once depart

          Obviously that poem rhymes and I know that rhyming can so easily ruin a poem and it’s very hard to rhyme well, but about half of my poems rhyme and about half of them don’t. Sometimes I just can’t help myself and I rhyme, but even I will read my poems later and cringe at the rhymes I created. I think one of the main reasons I love all your poetry Ms. Kay, is that you don’t rhyme very often, and when you do, it is beautiful. Your rhymes have such deliberate, significant, and specific purpose that they always enhance your poems instead of drag them down like rhymes can so often do.

          Honestly, I just love everything about your poetry! I love the way you tell a story - both written and oral. I love the way you use punctuation to convey meaning in your poems because I almost never use punctuation in my poems unless absolutely necessary. You opened my eyes to see what a wondrous difference punctuation can make in a poem. You showed me that the possibilities are endless when you utilize every tool at your disposal.

          I love all the figurative language you always use. Sometimes it is so subtle, but it is always flawless! The way that you just seem to think in metaphors is so amazing to me! I admire your talent so much! All your poems inspire me! I especially love listening to you perform your poetry because you are a natural it! You know exactly where to pause and your hand motions are always perfect! Your voice and movements add a whole new layer of depth to each of your poems, making them more memorable than they already are. You are just so captivating to listen to which is why I think I have watched almost every one, if not every single one, of your YouTube videos. My favorite poems of yours are, of course “Hands,” and then “The Type,” “Dreaming Boy,” “Private Parts,” “Mrs. Ribeiro,” “Postcards,” and I absolutely adore “Love Poem #137!” I first became familiar with them by watching YouTube videos of you performing them, but I recently bought your book No Matter the Wreckage that I had been dying to get my hands on for years, and now I am reading them all over again in there. I’m also reading all your other ones that I am not familiar with yet, but intend to be very soon! Your book was one of the most exciting purchases I’ve ever made!

          I also love your poem “The Toothbrush to the Bicycle Tire!” I actually chose you as my mentor poet in my AP English class this year, so I gave a presentation on you and taught my class about who you are. I used that poem as my mentor poem and wrote my own poem inspired by it. As you’ll see in my presentation, I love the duality and unique subject matter of that poem. The extended metaphor you use is just so genius! Also, you are the queen of puns! You never overuse them; you let them (or somehow they always do) add such brilliant humor to your already distinct style and voice. You definitely inspired me to use as many as possible in my own poem which is kind of a continuation of the story in your poem. It clarifies some uncertainties and brings the story of the toothbrush and the bicycle tire full circle (no pun intended) for now. 

Here is a link to the presentation I gave. You can find my inspired poem on slide 6.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1-B0qY-fmC8bSyWMSjH-B9kx9stQZ_2cqmktHXe7BaWA/edit

          Ms. Kay, thank you so much for being such an inspiration to me and so many other young poets around the world! I love what you do with Project V.O.I.C.E.! I still consistently feel like I don’t have a voice, and there was a long time when I believed that I couldn’t write poetry or be a poet. I didn’t think I was smart enough or wise enough even though I had identified as a writer my whole life. I had been told my whole life I had a way with words and I was good at writing, but I never thought that meant or included poetry too. I thought poetry was this obscure thing that only geniuses like Emily Dickinson could write. I mean I had read poetry before and rarely ever understood it, so why would I think that I could write it if I couldn’t even read and comprehend it? Turns out that writing it is about a million times easier than reading it because you get to have the poet’s intent instead of trying to figure it out. You get to make your own interpretations instead of discerning others. Poetry gave me a voice. Poetry gave me the confidence I have today, not only in my writing abilities, but in who I am as a person. I never would’ve found my voice and gained that confidence if it wasn’t for you Ms. Kay. I will forever be grateful to you for that, and ultimately changing my life. I got to discover another huge talent and passion of mine because of you. I will never forget all that you did for me.

          And on behalf of all the other students and kids that you mentor and inspire through Project V.O.I.C.E., and all of your endeavors, thank you! Thank you for putting the beautiful art form that is spoken word on the map! Thank you for giving other young writers like myself confidence and a voice! Thank you for showing us that poetry is for everyone! Thank you for showing us that everyone has a voice worth hearing and a story worth sharing!

I am eternally grateful to you and constantly inspired by you.

Sincerely,

Brenna