What Real Writers Look Like

Hint: They Look at Lot Like You, Writing

For a few years in my late 30s, I was a poet.

I’d never really written poetry until then. In college, as an English literature major, I took the bare minimum of poetry courses, if you don’t count Shakespeare. (The Milton course was anything but paradise.)

After college, I went straight into writing about technology. If you don’t count lyrics of songs and arias, my poetry exposure was pretty light to this point.

Signing up for a Continuing Education course on writing poetry as an adult was a stretch. But the course wasn’t graded, so I figured I’d try something different.

Once enrolled in the course, with a regular thrum of assignments, I enjoyed not only writing the poems, but also how the process affected me.

Poetry became a new lens for reality-a filter through which to examine my life.

I started noticing the sounds of language, relishing the rhythms of syllables and clash of consonants. Occasionally, a full opening line of a poem arrived in my head like a gift from beyond.