About the Poems - PT
About the Poems
by Paige Taggart To People Who Sometimes Read is a series in which I attempt to make language my bitch. I had exhausted my previous mode of writing, coinciding with a need to change my life. It was time to admit my “soulshame,” to allow myself to be vulnerable and more declarative, a befitting circumnavigation with my lifestyle transition. I was influenced immensely by two poet’s correspondence of email-poems that were both extremely personal and had mastered a certain building format that I wanted to build-off of myself. At one point I didn’t even believe in editing. I had said it’s like trying to train a mule to talk. But I now realize that part of my dream is to begin without perfection, in fact, the more chaotic, the more likely I am to hone-in. Oftentimes, I felt like I was trapped in a cave that only allows exit when the sea is at low tide, and frequently the sea was at high-tide but with my one-good-eye I was able to scratch lesions into the walls. I found a dog that wasn’t mine but fed it anyway for four days, then I responded to the posters that had been duct-taped to tree trunks. The number put me on the phone with a sheriff. He was out for blood but when I told him my story, he let me go. I think I care about writing poetry more than anyone else in the world.