The Original Scrapbook

neb

The Original Scrapbook

When I was young, I collected poems. I wrote them down neatly and carefully, often cramping my hands in the effort to write page after page without error. I read poetry anthologies, and "Complete Works Of ", and small chapbooks, putting a bookmark at the poems I wanted to remember, and somehow (I can't explain my devotion) writing most of them down. I soon had a binder full. I would read and re-read the contents of this binder as the years went by, find more poems, and fill more binders. It was like creating a personal poetry anthology.

I don't know how the idea of making a scrapbook first came to me, I was in my mid teens at the time, and it seemed entirely natural to want to pair poems with images. I enjoyed the process of matching the feeling of one with the other; it was always a  challenge was to find the right image. I can tell you that many, many old copies of The National Geographic were dissected and turned to less-than-journalistic purposes in my hands. NG was my major resource, with it's human interest and landscape photography. I would have loved to use images of paintings, but my father's art books were sacrosanct (as they should be) - and there was no such thing as art journals in the second-hand shops where I lived. I was limited, but limitation sharpens appetite, and I kept on collecting both images and poems.

neb

For years - till today, in fact. I've left off cutting up old magazines, but I've never stopped collecting poems. The thing is, a good poem, or good poetry, has been like an extra eye or a telescope or a microscope or even a kaleidoscope or a piece of music a drumbeat a rhythm a current a pulse  - the voice of a friend or my heart or God or nature or a teacher - the sound of someone who knows me, or whom I know or who speaks with my voice the thoughts I did not know I had till I heard them said, or who speaks truths I had missed when I blinked, or who showed me what was always there that I never noticed. Poetry has been invaluable on all levels and has been an essential part of my enjoyment of life. Everything is poetry! Life is poetry. Which is as ridiculous a statement as I can imagine, but what I mean is, poetry, good poetry, is an expression of truth that is supercharged with meaning. I could just as well say "Life is meaningful." 

neb

 A few years ago I showed a friend of few pages from my scrapbooks, something I almost never do. (I don't talk about poetry. Who talks about poetry? I mean, in regular life?) I trusted she would be kind, we have very similar taste in books, and I knew she read poetry. I wasn't wrong. She said, "I wish you could send me one of these every day." We began exchanging poems, and I began thinking that the internet was a big place, full of poems and art...

neb

And here we are. This is my online poetry scrapbook. It's the strangest thing, to be back at this after all these years. I can now collect poetry and talk about it as much as I want, no one has to pay me any mind. And the best part is, I am finding more poetry than ever, and the intersection between poetry and image/art is only getting more interesting, just like the intersection between all the arts. Poetry is music and movement and sound and image and form - ! Yes, well, it only wants an outlet. This is mine.