The Day The Sun Set (Poems)

#TAPA2020

For those of you that don't know this is for a poetry contest I entered called The Aesthetic Poetry Awards by soul_searcher24 , you should check it out!!

Favorite Poet: E. E. Cummings

Favorite Poem: Oh that's so harrrrrd, I love so many!! Well I'll go with this one since it leaves more to interpretation that the other ones.

Dive For Dreams by E. E. Cummings

dive for dreams
or a slogan may topple you
(trees are their roots and wind is wind)

trust your heart
if the seas catch fire
(and live by love
though the stars walk backward)

honour the past
but welcome the future
(and dance your death
away at this wedding)

never mind a world
with its villains or heroes
(for god likes girls
and tomorrow and the earth)

My Interpretation: Ok so the above poem is actually one of the less cryptic ones by E. E. Cummings, since most of his poems play around with punctuation and location to get the point across and can often take time to understand properly-but that's why like him lol.

Anyways "Dive for Dreams" preaches exactly that. Diving for dreams. It's a message to keep going, following your dreams and following your heart, despite how much the world may turn upside down, even "if he seas catch fire" or "the stars walk backwards," in hate not love. Dive in head first, don't be distracted by petty ups and down of life, or by the crazy things happening around you- negative or positive (villains or heroes)- or something as simple as "a slogan" could "topple you," or bring you down. While these things are important, it is key to understand that nothing can stop us from living out our dreams unless we let it.

Take time to remember your past and the past if the world, see how we can learn from past actions,  and embrace our lives ahead of us. We don't know what tomorrow will bring, the only way to find out is to get there, or we may lose the chance to see something wonderful.

"Trees are their roots and wind is wind" is leading up to "honour the past but welcome the future." (And yes honor is spelled with a u it's supposed to be like that) Trees are their roots because that stay put, firmly planted, just as the past is firmly set in the past whether we like it or not. Wind is wind, it changes every single second and we won't know what it will do until it does it, just like the future is forever unknown until it becomes the present.

"Dance your death away at this wedding." Allow love to fill your every thought and dance, don't crawl through life. Send those negative worries away, negativity won't get you anywhere. Live life as a wedding, filled with dancing, love, community, family, friendship, and laughter. Don't skip the wedding and jump to the funeral for a death that hasn't even happened yet.

"For god likes girls and tomorrow and the earth." If I'm being honest I'm not entirely sure how to interpret that, particularly since "god" is not capitalized-which could just be because the whole thing in the version I was looking at is typed in lowercase but I don't know. I kinda see this line as meaning that God loves all these things to, love, future, and life are not overrated. Kind of saying "if God likes them you bet they are great!" Plus if God also likes theses things and you do also it will please God...maybe? God will smile on those that live with love, ya that makes sense. Well that's about all I've got for a super super long detailed interpretation haha.

My Inspiration to Start Writing Poetry:

I started writing poetry mostly to explore a different way of writing. I used to love writing poems when I was little and I've always enjoyed learning about in in school. I stated seeing more snd more poetry books and thought I'd try it out. My first poem I wrote for this book "Love Story" was inspired when I was people-watching while sitting at a Starbucks. I was just looking around me and the aesthetic sparked and idea. Since then I mostly wrote poems whenever I was inspired by something or dealt passionately about something and that still how I do it really. Over this past summer I spit out a TON of new poems, mostly as I was going through liking a dude for the first time and, long story short, some sh** went down. So writing poems helped to channel my emotions and get it out of my head, particularly since I didn't have a whole lot of people I was comfortable talking about it to about it at the time. Everything is fine now and it's not like something super bad happened I promise, it just kinda threw my emotions out the door and into a wind storm then shoved them back in my head. So. Ya. I wrote poems. And with 2020 being the year that it was, and me being a hormonal angsty teenager, with other teenager friends, who reads a lot of books to boot, it provides lots of material to write poetry haha.

Some of my other favorites by E. E. Cummings that are also his less crazy deep and bizarre ones:

"For whatever we lose (Like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea"

The one above is technically an excerpt from one of his poems called "Maggie and Milly and Molly And May."

"the most
wasted
of all days
is one
without
laughter."

"Once we believe
in ourselves, we
can risk
curiosity, wonder,
spontaneous
delight, or any
experience that
reveals the human
spirit."

I love this one especially (though I think it's more of a quote then a poem but still):

"To be nobody but yourself
in a world which is doing it's
best, night and day, to make you
everybody else - means to fight
the hardest battle which any
human being can fight; and never stop fighting."