The Poetic Motif

I’m getting tired of using celestial themes and ancient mythologies. Writers tend to get sucked into this trap off glorifying the cliches, the motifs that have littered quality literature for hundreds of years. There’s no real reason to reference the sun or dredge up Greek gods (it’s not as though I’ve ever lent much thought to their symbolic prominence), yet they manage their way in there regardless. What about finding the beauty in the everyday, the mundane normalcy of routine simpleton lives. Championing the random acts of kindness, or the altruism only you know—these seem worthier causes. I don’t want to claim that “your radiance is like the sun”, but rather “it blinds me like the warmness of your body snuggled under the waves of sheets on our favorite weekend morning”, or something along those lines. Using real actions and occurrences as opposed to the metaphysical, hyper-intellectual imagery that hovers in the realm of poetics. It will always be there, the desire to emulate the greats and borrow from the endless trove of beautiful metaphors, yet sometimes the real beauty lies everywhere else.

I can only propose to live by this self proposed maxim, yet I can guarantee I’ll get sucked right back in after reading some Shelley, Keats, or Shakespeare on a rainy, woebegone day. It’s the endless lure of true greatness calling from the grave, enrapturing you in imagery that is far to fanciful to even hold true now a days. Inevitable indeed, but I suppose the whole point of this is finding the meaning in moments, in the epiphany seconds where all the simple, boring everyday stuff gets put on hold, and your able to coalesce the mosaic and find the beauty in it all. Life becomes not about bills, papers, deadlines, crushes, or hangovers (to name a few), but rather the disastrous beauty that encompasses it all. Here’s to hoping none of the above cheese imagery wanders into the fingertip and onto the “paper”, yet only time will tell.