My Most Favorite Poet

To fulfill an elective writing minor credit I took Creative Writing in the last semester of college. I knew anything with creative in the title would suit me and that I'd have no problem applying myself. This was also the same semester in which B and I first started dating which could only mean one thing: my puppy-love, star-gazed, emotional cup was overflowing and that my writing would have a very pointed subject: Love.

My instructor was awesome. She encouraged writing workshops and gave us wonderful prompts to get our juices flowing. Sometimes that was all I needed to write about something I just could not get down on paper. As part of my final project I had to compile a number of poems written by different poets on the subject of my choice while also integrating a few pieces I'd written over the course of the semester. Obviously, the subject was Love and it was not hard to find poems about love. However, it was hard to find good poems about love that were not gag-me material.

E.E. Cummings quickly became my go-to poet. The poem I included in my compilation was i carry your heart in mine.



(click for source)

That is only part of the poem but doesn't that one little part just make your heart melt? Doesn't it make you instantly think of the person(s) whose heart you carry? Mine are B and Logan, obviously. But even more for Logan as he grows older and develops into a little person.

Before Logan and before our marriage B and I committed to writing our own wedding vows. E.E. Cummings was my go-to inspiration. I knew it might have been a little cliche so I tried to find a poem or verse that was not so well-known, that spoke even more to me about the love I felt for B and that is when I found Since Feeling is First:

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
–the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

And there you have it friends. The opening of my wedding vows to B read: "When e.e. cummings said 'we are for each other' he had you and me in mind..." And since then this simple yet deep phrase has shaped our love and the meaning in our marriage and family. That is how this blog name was born and once more for my birthday (in just a few weeks!) I will be inking this on the inside of my foot. I've always wanted a tattoo but never wanted to get something that did not have enough meaning to want forever. Now I have it. I found that one thing that will always be etched into my heart and remind me how much I love my family, through all the highs and loves, goods and bads.

If you have a tat, what does it mean to you?