The Practice of Poetics, Jasmine's Journey
Where are you, Miss "Poetic Warrior"??
Jasmine?
Jasmine, where you at?
Why haven’t you taken some time lately?
R u Lost??
Why can’t you just write something (brilliant)?!
Are you even still a poet?!?!
Where. Are YOU?!
Breathing, trying, failing, winning, daydreaming, developing new addictions like working all the time instead of giving care directly to mend the pieces that feel spiraling and shattering.
Figuring things out, learning the hard ways, step-by-step, pain-then-stretch, racing from the clock hands that seem to chase me, and savoring the days where I’m made to slow down.
I’m doing everything; everything that has led me back to one of the things that matters most – returning to one of the most important pieces of me –
Being a Poet.
In one of my favorite Prince songs, “D.M.S.R.,” he says “I don’t wanna be a poet, ‘cause I don’t wanna blow it.” And for some reason, that line stuck with me. Rattling in the back of my mind for weeks, searching for a space to settle. I don’t wanna be a poet, ‘cause I don’t wanna blow it. I don’t wanna be a poet, ‘cause I don’t wanna blow it. I don’t wanna be a poet, ‘cause I don’t wanna blow it!
(Ironically enough, for this same reason that Prince says, is the main reason I haven’t publicly pursued my visions of music… but that’s another story for another place & time.)
As someone who has passionately practiced this battling act of being both a poet and a perfectionist for years (I’m working on that by the way), as I’ve gotten older I find myself scrambling in search of the best words to say. The most “flawless” and calculated ways to use this voice of mine. I’ve scrapped so many ideas, held so much back, contained so much ‘till the point of implosion, restrained myself from expression to the point of losing focus on what is really important. Pushed my body through so much unnecessary stress, exerting my limits. Been so flooded with witnessing misfortune, terror — carrying trinkets of grief that travel in endless waves (I seem to write most when I’m impassioned or grieving for some reason).
Then, a couple weeks ago I was like: “Ain’t this a bit backwards? Are we regressing? Isn’t this the time of life where everything is supposed to be coming together?” Apparently, not for real. Ha!
At 15, 16, 17, 18… my biggest hurdle, and subtle obsession, was trying to be taken seriously. I had these galaxies of dreams about becoming a Poet, a writer who would encourage people to see their own possibilities and find light within themselves. I wanted to tell the truth, and do it in a way only I can. But, somewhere down the line, I was made to believe that that may not be feasible. As I grew, I perfected the art of “professionalism.” I changed my voice to be less country, more “articulate,” more staccato with my syllables. I studied and practiced like my life depended on it, my future did. I worked, I worked hard too – encapsulated in a daze of 4.0 GPAs and salivating at the taste of success. I also started stringing together these big-body-dictionary-words in hopes that it would make me sound super-intelligent. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll always love a good, delectable, savory word; but, what I was doing then was overkill. I was trying to embody everything that I thought would get me where I wanted to be. To where I thought I needed to be. I won’t front like I haven’t learned and achieved a lot from conditioning myself to those standards, but I’m evolving beyond that now.
I’ll never forget the way some people looked at me when I told them my goals, these dreams I’ve had of a future within and beyond myself. At one point in my life, crazy enough, I decided to settle to “be an engineer or a software designer at a large tech company.” Yes, I actually said those words. Now, that’s absolutely fine if it’s the lifelong aspiration of someone else out there, but that ain’t Jasmine Lewis. When I chose to be transparent, I told people, “a writer and artist (writers are artists, by the way), a cultural worker, an educator, a musician, a movement-builder, a collaborator-towards-social-justice.” They were looking at me like I was trying to build monuments out of legos. Maybe so.
Maybe that’s too ambitious for some. But I believe that’s possible, too.
Sometimes, they still give me that same face. Those kind smiles, those “Oh honey, you’ll figure it out” sentiments, those empty nods like “Okay girl, sure!” Subliminal condolences maybe? Haha!
Around that same era of life, in my mid-teens, I gathered up the gumption – the audacity, actually – to pitch my poems to a bunch of different literary publications and magazines. I bet you could guess what that looked like:
“Your submission was rejected…”
“We decided not to move…”
“We regret to inform you…”
Do they really regret it? I don’t think so. I came to a realization/assumption that “Girl, ain’t nobody tryna listen to a 15 year-old Black Girl from Alabama. They’re barely even trying to listen to poetry.”
I decided to take it even further, though. I kept writing regardless, because other people’s opinions of my work never was what affirmed me or cemented my brilliance – that was innate. Only I could really do that. And besides, I never wrote for validation anyway. I never wrote for no accolades. I write for survival.
I never wrote to be seen, I wrote to feel.
I’ve always known I was a poet though. When I learned how to read and write and instantly fell in love with language. When I first learned what rhymes were. When I started writing melodies in my Kindergarten journal, when I sang in the church choir and received my first solo in the third grade (thank you Aunt Vanessa). When I was first told I was too sensitive, when people began trusting me to be their listening ear, when I danced despite being told by instructors that I wasn’t the best at it (they used other words about “preparedness,” and “are you sure” questionnaires and all that jazz). When I sang the gospel and people smiled, when I read my written words out loud and they nodded with their eyebrows raised. When my beloved Godmother (my eternal muse) RoRo asked for me to read her my poetry. She says “That was beautiful Jas! I love when you read your poems. You have a beautiful voice, baby.”
When I did everything, always – especially – when no one was watching.'
I know that my life has always felt like Poetry and has found solace in the nestling of it, and so have I.
When I write, each strike of the pen feels like shedding skin. It felt so good. It feels so good! I don’t even know how to explain it: it’s kind of like your soul starts glowing and you can see it light up your fingertips. A gleam of light only you can see. It feels like dancing alone, like singing, like reading aloud your favorite quotes, like crying storms of tears, like laughing until you can barely breathe, like imagining. It’s all of those things too. Even while my hands start to sore from crafting so many rhythms of words, pouring it out on the page, all other pressures leave my body and mind. Even if only for a minute. My priority becomes the way my emotions will color the page, and I get to fill that space with whatever I feel like. No contradictions or criticism except my own.
A spark so magnetic,
maybe this is what Freedom feels like.
Poetry was/is my inhale. Deep, breath in – scribble it out.
Of course, I was taught how to write, to rhyme, to read – but no one ever taught me how and when to write poetry. It’s just something that was embedded in me. I knew it was my medium and my direction from the moment we met.
As this year comes to an end, I can’t help but reminisce on my relationship to Poetry and what it means to me. My “Practice of Poetics” has become so scarce in the past year, I went an entire 13 months without writing a single poem (to put that in perspective, that’s the longest break I’ve had from poetry since I was 5 years old, and I was 21 during this hiatus). I’d jot down ideas when I had them, short lil’ lines and rhymes, concepts that came to mind. But I didn’t make space&time to complete a cohesive piece. In my mind, I was like, “Jasmine, what’s going on? Why aren’t we writing? Why can’t we write? Why does it feel so distant and… intimidating?”And, in true writer fashion, even though I still didn’t write a poem, I journaled about not being able to write. Ha!
“Language cradled me, and I held it dearly. I would write every day, I would read every day. I found that patterns on pages also crafted worlds that I could travel and escape to, while giving me the tools and furthered my ambition to create my own.
I’ve always had a vivid imagination, and have spent countless hours of my youth building stories, songs, and visions. Now, we’re 10 months into this year, and I have yet to write a new poem — not a single one. I have had a reoccurring mental message pop up every few weeks saying, “Have you even written any poems yet?” I keep feeling these subtle inquisitions and accusations of my artistic authority: “Are you still being an artist? Are you even still an artist?” And, the most important question: “Where are you, Miss Poetic Warrior??”
– from my written reflections in Fall 2023
That burnout, stress, systemic violence, apprehension of the future, all of that can take a toll on the body, mind, and imagination. And it has definitely made this year particularly heavy for me, and so many other people out here. When I give myself permission to be a Poet, I allow myself to be SoulFull, to show up as me in whatever form that may look like for the moment. My passion on that page is explosive in the most beautifully freeing and hypnotic way, and that translates into how I want to work, how I want to use my voice going forwards, how I want to live. Lately though, I’ve been feeling like a poet at a loss for words.
This year, I’ve written about 4 poems total. Because I decided that I deserve at least that accountability and kindness to my younger (and present) self to write something. (Shoutout to the people who gave me the additional encouragement to do so through their work and providing me space and reading my work, Nabila Lovelace and Ayling Dominguez). That’s still a pretty low number for me, but I’m happy that I wrote when I did. Despite everything. Because everything.
I recently became a student of the great Audre Lorde a couple years ago, the OG Warrior Poet, and was fascinated that it had taken me so long to discover her work. It’s like she was saying everything I knew but didn’t have the words for, everything I needed to hear. Similar to how I felt when I began reading poetry of other Poets for the first time, when I was about 11. That Maya Angelou “Phenomenal Woman.” That “Ego Tripping” with Nikki Giovanni. I felt this sort of ancestral emblem of possibility, knowing that someone has been in a similar position (Black girl poets from that down South soil). Someone else has been thinking and dreaming about these sorts of things too. When I read “Poetry Is Not a Luxury,” best believe it changed me! It crystallized so many of the ideas and emotions that I’ve carried about Poetry/Poetics since I was little. She says:
“The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives. It is within this light that we form those ideas by which we pursue our magic and make it realized. This is poetry as illumination, for it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are, until the poem, nameless and formless-about to be birthed, but already felt. That distillation of experience from which true poetry springs births thought as dream births concept, as feeling births idea, as knowledge births (precedes) understanding.”
– excerpt from Audre Lorde’s “Poetry Is Not a Luxury”
Ugghhh! I’m once again fawning and fanning out over her as I’m writing this, hahaha!
Poetry is truly that star that unveils truth and gives a glimpse/gaze into the constellations beyond; the imagined, the cosmic, the embodied spiritual. It’s cathartic, it’s incandescent. A space where times collide and visions mend into clouds that carry the weight of the future.
Ms. Lorde also said “Our poems formulate the implications of ourselves, what we feel within and dare make real (or bring action into accordance with), our fears, our hopes, our most cherished terrors… As poets. And there are no new pains. We have felt them all already. We have hidden that fact in the same place where we have hidden our power. They lie in our dreams, and it is our dreams that point the way to freedom. They are made realizable through our poems that give us the strength and courage to see, to feel, to speak, and to dare.”
Isn’t that utterly, inescapably beautiful? I think so.
She holds up a mirror for me.
All of this is why, when I say “I’m a Poet,” I’m not saying that just because it’s cute or it sounds good. I’m saying that because I feel that to my core. Being Poetic has sustained me. It has kept me imaginative. It has revealed to me what Power really is. It’s made me recognize images of life so clearly that sometimes it gives me chills. Poetry supplies me space to strategize, to daydream, to escape, to center focus, to predict the future and comb through the past, to reckon with the things I felt were inexplicable.
I’m saying “I’m a Poet,” because poetry has kept me alive.
I’m really ‘bout that.
In the wake of the recent passing of one of my favorite and most jeweled poets – Ms. Nikki Giovanni – I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be a Poet in these times. Especially considering that, we’re not seeing them – or the reverence for the art itself – as frequently as we used to.
I’ve been ruminating with the question, what does it even mean to “Practice Poetry?”
To me, it means being a Witness. It means honoring your emotions, and encouraging others to give themselves space to do the same. To find glimmers of light when the world feels bleak, and still hold those shadowed moments of sorrow. Not giving into the disillusionment, but letting it return you towards courage; taking a moment to recalibrate. To harness hope and empathy like the most prized possessions. To bear anger and love with the same breath. Prioritizing sincerity over “selling-you-a-story,”and not being ‘suaded into opposite directions just because they are “more realistic.” It’s grasping fire in your fingertips and keeping that same blaze burning in your heart as much as you do in your mind and your language.
Practicing Poetry is embodying the soulful and transforming emotion into gems of light.
I am blessed & honored to bear that responsibility, to share, and to carry it forward as I continue to be here — holding the torch as one of ‘dem new Poets.
Sometimes I Choke (on my own Words),
a poem by Jasmine Lewis, written Sat. December 21, 2024
It’s like being a soldier without a sword,
Left in the wilderness
Desperately searching for necessities of
Survival.
(sometimes I wish I could hold my breath for 5 4evers)
Your sweet return is my favorite remedy.
An intensity, wrapped clouds around me
Reminding me that there is space beyond these skies.
Constellations haze both eyes.
No one else can see the ways we meet.
My ultimate treasure,
My most enthralling weapon.
To
inhale
StarDust
of
a Supernova!!
Levitating into spaces that only we know of.
Those where time disappears,
Where Fear transforms into Fervor.
Death becomes infinite and collides with the feeling of being
so
- – - ALIVE!
So alive that sometimes I hide
from you.