Preface
Before we get to really know each other, here’s a bit about me:
Who Am I?
My name is Sierra J. Williams. I am currently a freshman, attending the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA. I developed a deep interest in writing from a young age and love words and literature as I realized writing could be an extension of my curiosity and artistic expression. I was raised in a multicultural environment–always never really a part of one group, or any group at that—and I believe I was able to develop an empathetic, open-minded, and globally conscious lens on life.
I really value seeing the simplistic beauty hidden in everything and everyone. I believe that writing is a well of knowledge and understanding and a beacon of truth founded on integrity and humility. Driven by a thirst for creativity and knowledge, I want to write and uncover hidden truths and stories. Thus, here is my love letter to poetry, the human experience, and reading.
My Love Letter to Poetry, the Human Experience, and Reading:
Poetry & The Human Experience
I find that I am most often profoundly moved by the arts and the human spirit. Poetry and the power and freedom I find behind the pen makes me feel like I’m writing with lighting and I feel alive and on fire. I love writing about the human psyche, strength, love, and all the emotions.
I love hearing the experience of others, whether through film, poetry, writings, books, songs, etc. There’s something very inspiring about the human capacity to love and resurface as well as the overall human experience; whether beautiful or shrouded in darkness, emotion is a beautiful thing.
I also love writing about nature as a reflection of interstates and yearnings that are congruent with that particular season. I am very inspired by jazz, rock, and indie songwriting but I love to listen to as many different music genres as I can. Knowledge, whether knowledge of the human spirit, the mind, art, nature, and everything beautiful is what resonates with me the most when I write.
I very much want to be a well-rounded music, experience, book, fashion, and film connoisseur and I think this drives me in my studies in linguistics, cultural anthropology, east asian civilizations & languages, and creative writing at school and for the rest of my life. Yet, I find that poetry is my main lifeline, time and time again…
Interlude: Prose
I STILL FEEL AS THOUGH I AM ME
I want my poetry to say all the things I one day may not be able to speak aloud. Today I need to write with truth. For tomorrow and far longer—over and yonder the moon—I could swiftly be gone with the wind, I could disappear on a whim, at the drop of a hat; A wry and grim performance. All will be lost. My mind will be filled with wonderless wanderlust and worthless woolgathering. Filled with dazed, errant, and delinquent abstractions; Full of etherness nihility. I still feel as though I am me. But there's quiet after the storm. There's quiet in the eye of the storm. Somewhere...I stand in between. In and out of sight, with and without sound. The tides and winds engulf me. Floods sweep the isthmus of my ebbing id and drench my previous psyche in odium toward life; the opium of pain and blame. The tempest breaks down my weir. It wears me down to a mere mired moribund. Writhing for breath, withering with no air, it mars my mind till it's frag-men-ted and incomplete... I still feel as though I am me. For as long as I do, I shall write poetry filled with little excuse. Filled with all that I know to be true; Full of life's tender misfortunes. Before I reek of the effluvium of nonbeing and other such euphemisms, that's what Atropos has fated me to be: To be a poet or to be a fool. While I still exist with a mind of my own, while I still feel as though I am me... The former is faithfully resolute and absolute decree.
Reading
Language is my first love. Whether at my best or worst, writing has been my greatest source of
joy, creative freedom, and emotional expression. Words create my world. As a writer, I also read a lot. Books have changed my life. Here’s why:
THOUGHTS ON READING
If all else fails me, at least I can say I was loved. I was loved.
And I lived—how I lived many times over—and have seen the world anew with so many different pairs of eyes.
I have lived in many different forms and places, with different thoughts, always contradictory. These forms...
But in the end, in the end, I will know that I was never truly alone
There's only so many people you can take, lives you can swallow, thoughts you can consume whole...
That's why I read so slowly.
It may take me three years to read a book, stopping at the end, towards the middle… but when I reopen it, all the memories flood me again—all of their memories—and It's like I've never left the scene, never missed a beat
Readers understand such bliss.
The endings of books are always the same, for they leave you with such haunting sentiments, and their words fester and their voices linger.
Like the end of The Stranger: "For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate."
Like the ending of Schoolgirl: "You won't see me again."
Like the ending of A Tale of Two Cities: "It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."
Like the ending of The Great Gatsby: “The orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . And one fine morning—so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
And like Frida Kahlo says best, "I hope the exit is joyful and I hope to never return."
The endings of books, so bittersweet and wistful; setsunai, mono no aware, Wabi-Sabi... words can not describe such melancholy. Such emotion is meant to be felt—not described, nor truly understood. Absorbing, simmering, and serenading yourself in the world and words of the book is great, but there is no greater impression than feeling;
“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader—not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.” – E.L. Doctorow
Epilogue: Poetry
HAIKU: ALLIA
She opened a book
She found worlds behind a word
Nothing else as true
Sincerely,
Sierra J. Williams
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