I used to think that there was always a very valid and
potentially powerful point to creative expression via poetry and art (and sometimes I still think so and still feel that way), but a lot
of my creative expression is very personal (which I'm usually fine with,
because that's how I write and create).
But lately I've been thinking that even if my poems are a
meaningful form of expression for me personally, they might not have much of a
larger purpose (and they're still valuable to me if they don't but...) I mean, who wants to hear a middle-aged, middle-class white
woman go on and on about her body issues and her anxiety and her depression and
her anger and her relationship issues and her uncertainty about whatever the
heck love is and so on and so forth?
Granted, I'm technically poverty level, but I
don't feel poor, so I'll always consider myself middle class. Granted, I'm
technically disabled, but I don't directly focus on that in my poetry and
sometimes it upsets me when people seem to encourage me to focus MORE on my
disability in my poetry, because maybe I already AM focusing on it in an
indirect, semi-abstract sort of way. Sometimes I think that me feeling like
I barely exist and that I'm not particularly meaningful is a sort of side
effect of the brain damage of my stroke, because I don't remember feeling so
pointless when I was younger, but maybe I always felt that way, or maybe I
would have felt that way when I got older anyway, whether or not I had undergone such a brain fluke.
But it makes me feel a bit weirdly uncomfortable if people seem
more interested in my brain damage rather than my poetry - because of those two
parts of my life, I most definitely prefer the poetry, whether or not it interests many others.
