Poetic Reflections Week 2-on Life In Verse

Thank you so much, everybody!

Love and Hugs always,

~~Aynsley (Life In Verse)

Tell us about yourself.

My name is Aynsley. My favorite color is purple. I have five loves. Blogs and Poetry (as you have probably already discovered) Music, Language (I want to learn 15), and my siblings and my cat (O.K. that's six… I can count… I promise!) I love to have fun, which is different from the aforementioned things because to have fun is a verb, not a noun. I only have two settings on which I do things: Not at all, or wholeheartedly. If I'm not immediately passionate about something, usually I abandon it. On the other hand, if I like what I'm doing, I won't do it halfway. It may take a while for me to get where I'm going (because I'm also very stubborn and it is hard for me to change my routine) But eventually, I will get where I want to be driven by a fierce passion to get there. By now, you have probably also figured out that I love to talk (again, a verb!) which is bad for me, I know, but that, and my incredibly annoying laugh, are the two character flaws of mine that I'm working on now. I am studying to be a musician right now and Shostakovich and Mussorgsky are my favorite composers. If you read on, you'll learn a few more of my favorite things, and I realized that if you put them all together it seems like I'm a sort of depressed person that likes to hang around in the darkness holding séances in my closet for undead things, but I can assure you that's not the case. I am alive and well and I love life! I just also like Shostakovich, Tim Burton movies, and Edgar Allen Poe. Shostakovich is a very good composer who wrote many pieces of music to fit with the time and mood of Russia during the second world war. It is very hard to convey such political meaning in a piece of music or an opera. Dmitri Shostakovich (or the Shost, as my brother calls him) is truly an inspiration and the only man who could ever convey the mood of an entire country through music. While I'm speaking of Russian composers, I must note that my composer crush is Mussorgsky who wrote a lot of FUN music, and I really respect him for being able to convey emotions and be able to paint pictures in your mind through music. His baton is a paintbrush. My favorite pieces of music to play are written by Bach, which is a much more accurate representation of my person, because all of his pieces are baroque and light and fluffy yet difficult and REALLY FUN to play. By far the Bach Double is my favorite piece of music EVER, however cliché that might seem. (oops, sorry about wandering from the subject… that is another thing I'm really good at. By now I must seem really conceited and stupid to you… well, let's move on then, shall we? I will try to dispel you of that notion, however, I am afraid that it may be true… although I hope not).

Tell me about your blog, the name, what does it mean to you?

 My blog blog bloggity blog blog blog. I named it, sort of as a pun, but I don't think it went as well or as puny as I intended. I thought that it could be interpreted Life inverse or life in verse. I guess I think that somewhere inside everyone is that thing that can change somebody or even yourself. And, yeah, that sounds a bit lame, but I really do think that everyone has something that can turn someone's life upside-down, hence the "Inverse" part of that. But the part that is "in verse" is sort of supposed to imply the poetry emphasis on the blog. The significance was born after I named the blog, not beforehand. I mean, I didn't name the blog after an important event or quote in my life, but I named it in the hopes that it would be significant or important in someone else's life. Now it has become a big part of me and who I am, I would say it has meaning now, but the meaning grew with the blog, it didn't start before that.

When did you start blogging?

Well, I really started blogging in school. I was in a composition class in which one of the exercises was to read a bit of news and write about it, then comment on what two or three other classmates had written once a week.  It was a challenge of style and content. I remember me and one of my friends got really into it. We both had starkly different political views, and we got into this huge war over the healthcare system/reform, but it was a really good for us, because we learned a lot about each other and we really stretched our minds and talked in depth with each other, but we kept all of our fighting confined to comments, so I think it was healthy for us. That was where I learned how to blog, but the blog I have now was my sister's 'fault.' She and I are really close in age, so she took the same class as I, but with a different teacher, and that was, I could be wrong, but that was where she got the idea for her blog. Then she started telling me I should get a blog. She told me it was really relaxing and a great place to just vent or have a place to let go, and I kept thinking, I'll never keep it up, it was a thing for school, that's not really who I am, computers hate me and I hate them, and so on and so forth, until I started my first blog. It was a total flop and I think I spent more time getting the background looking pretty then I did actually posting. I didn't think I had anything to say.  But then my sister kept checking in on my blog and she would ask me why I never posted anything and get a little agitated. So I decided to try again. I started the blog that I have now, and I was pretty halfhearted, to tell the truth, and I thought, I'll just write a couple of posts to make my sister happy and then it'll blow over and I will just keep my thoughts to myself as normal. But a couple weeks in, I don't know how, Jingle found my blog and left a comment on one of the very few posts inviting me to come join poet's rally. I was overwhelmed. I realized that somebody cared. Somebody was reading what I had written. I had reached my goal and somebody had read what I had written and liked it enough to invite me to be a part of something. I had always liked my poetry, but I didn't think that anyone else would really care about it, so I usually kept it to myself. I was blown away and immediately joined. That really gave me the inspiration to keep going, I had a reason to blog. I had a purpose! It excited me, and I've kept blogging because I have fallen in love with it, and I have Jingle to 'blame.'

Your first poem? Remember?

I have looked at this question for three days now, and I don't think there is any possible way that I could remember my first poem. If I call my mom, she may know, but until then, I'll just say that I've been writing poetry sense I was 5, and that was before my memory will permit me to search and discover which exact poem came first.

What are your writing inspirations?

My family inspires me a lot. My mom was a British Literature major, so she kept me and my brother and sister well educated from the womb, and a lot of my Language Arts education and passion came from her, I'm really thankful for all that she exposed me to. My brother and sister are amazingly talented poets and I am constantly inspired by the work that they are able to produce. If I could write a poem half as good as my brother or my sister, my life would be complete. Ever since I have joined JP, I have discovered many new writers that have really inspired me. K. Shawn Edgar, and Jamie Dedes are two that I know by name, but many more I have visited and fallen in love with their blogs, and I hope to know and read more of them in the future. My Dead Poet Inspirations are Emily Dickinson and Edgar Allen Poe, the two most excellent wordsmiths in the history of the world! Both are a bit morbid, but I do not like them for their views on death and I don't identify with their depression, so nobody worry about me. It is the way that Edgar Allen Poe can make words into perfection. There is none more flawless poetry than that which comes from the pen of Poe. It is next to godliness in it’s perfection. No man or woman can come close to touching the utter faultlessness of his every work. The rhyme and meter counted with precision. Each rhyme so impossibly impeccable. It is my dream to be able to make beauty such as he.  Emily Dickinson was also a marvelous character. She never asked to be recognized and often stayed in her room, writing for the pleasure of writing, because she could, not because it paid or because she wanted to please others. She also did such cute things in her poems. The Dickinson almost-rhyme that only she can truly pull off. Rhymes that seemed very nonsense-ey but were filled with meaning. She is a woman worth admiring, and her work is just as worthy. Those are some of my poetry heroes and heroines. I guess it sounds a bit cheesy and melodramatic, all I'm writing about them. Now that I reread that, it sounds like I am writing a paper for an American Literature class… but you must forgive me, I truly do have crushes that bad on my inspirations, and it is very late at night, and I just accidentally minorly electrocuted myself, so things are starting not to make sense.

When did you start writing poetry? Do you write fiction as well?

Well, I've been writing poetry since I could pick up a pen! Poetry has always been the easiest mode of thinking and communicating for me. My first published poem was one called "Friendship" that I wrote in 3rd grade and was published in the "Celebration of Young Poets North and South Carolina," Which is a book that is published each year after kids from the age of 1st to 8th grade submit poems and some are chosen to be published in this book with varying degrees of awards and honors and prizes. I still have my copy of the book on my top shelf! The poem I wrote wasn't very good, but I guess it is what I could expect from 7-year-old me. I guess I wrote a couple of fiction stories when I was (a lot) younger, but mostly, I just talk a lot without saying anything. I tried to write a play this past year, but it didn't really go anywhere. I was excited about it for a while, but I really lost inspiration and I don't think anyone would ever preform it.

Do you have a favorite author or poet?

Yes. Edgar Allen Poe. Closely followed by Emily Dickinson, closely followed by Salvador Espriu. There are a lot more, but I have already spoken my fair share and I have a few more to go.

Favorite quote?

"I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity"--Edgar Allen Poe

What's your plan for your future writing? 

 My goal is not to go major or anything, but just to keep blogging. I'm really trying to blog more often, and I've been experimenting more with different types and styles of poetry. But I'm sticking to poetry, blogging, and small-scale stuff for the moment.

Any advice to poets who wish to start their own poetry community or blogging community?

 Don't be afraid of people who you think are going to hate you and your work. Don't think that no one will care or read it. I had these thoughts as I was starting my blog, and now, people read it! I have my off days where there are no hits, but most days, I get quite a few! The people who hate my blog either don't read it or don't write comments saying they hate it. So just go for it! Nobody is stopping you except you!  Nobody is going to hate you if you do it, only if you don't.

PS: This is such a honor to represent a promising poet, Life in Verse here at Jingle Poetry Community Garden Home, her thoughts are innocent, sweet, and apt...reading her is a great pleasure...Please feel free to read her talent via her blog below::

http://lifeinverse.wordpress.com/