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Blogs by Tyler Joseph Wiseman
Golden Roots 10/15/2003 10:41:31 PM
Poetry.
While to some an idle distraction, others a heart rending medium for the most intimate of introspection, and others yet a mere antiquity of language, it has been more than the sum of these parts for me. You see, I have survived, be it by that great old artist's cliche' of starve or thrive, through poetry for years. It has carried me through the gorgeous panoramas which are settled in America, through the hideous dens and dilapidations of modern urban jungles, through anguish, rapture, and the melancholy despair of our modern conditions and afflictions. One could say poetry is the lifeline I cling to in a maelstrom of sheer Americana madness.
The first poetry I recall reading was of the quasi-obscure beat poet, Richard Brautigan, who's book "Loading Mercury with a Pitchfork" was like liquid lightning to my young and tender shoot of a mind. I distinctly recall thinking "This is a poet, I want to be a poet!" God, to live like that, rambling on a wing and without a prayer, uninhibited by anything except the compulsion of ones personal genius; it had to be the most liberating of all things. It was formative to me in a time when much of what I would listen to was the likes of Georgia Satellite, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and George Thorogood.
Yet, despite the compelling thirst for travel, I was at odds with youth. My imposed prison of words, numbers and figures kept me at bay in the quaint, albeit frigid, city of Fargo, North Dakota. In essence, I was a slave to the school, with it's rigidity of disciplined education, it's shackles of law and the cruelest order. How ironic it was that the system which was established for the well being of my intellect should hinder the grander progress of education. I yearned so to see the universities of America, from Boston to San Diego, Yale to Berkeley. I wanted to live outside the libraries of the land, soaking in the insurmountable stacks of books even in slumber.
Finally, upon the sweet year which is sixteen, I found the liberation which would be my making.
More Blogs by Tyler Joseph Wiseman • Santa Cruz - Wednesday, March 9, 2005 • Golden Roots - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 • Back on the pale horse - Sunday, July 6, 2003
