Happy 200th Darwin.

“Darwin was an indefatigable chronicler and this is evident in the way that he collected
specimens, in how he documented and drew conclusions, and through his writing,” said
Brighde Mullins, Director of USC’s Master of Professional Writing Program. “All of these
characteristics had an impact on the poets of his day, and the poets that followed.”
(http://college.usc.edu/tcc/poetry.html)

Darwin's theory upon evolution has been taught in schools to us all for centuries, and yet few, including me, have begun to realize how much his undeniably brilliant mind, influenced words and the way they artistically comprise this potent form of art known as Poetry. Poetry is science. We collect pieces and fragments of experience and somehow by the graces we inhabit in within our individual auras as human beings with emotions, we emulate a voice that can speak, and does speak, on the behalf of many. Darwin emulated a voice that many poets, in my opinion, noticed and adopted. "His eyes
fixed on facts and minute details."- Elizabeth Bishop
When I think of it, Mary Oliver prides herself on that very notion with unstinting devotion as
well. “Give me that dark moment, I will carry it everywhere like a mouthful of rain.”


I used to wish for a falling star. It was a November afternoon unlike I had
ever experienced in the fall of 2002.
I sat outside the ugly walls that kept me captive, at an ugly community
college, in the ugly San Fernando Valley.
It must have been the rebellious force dying to be heard, the force that had
been silenced by my abusive father for the prior 18 years of my life. I never wrote
before that moment, and I wrote to remember that moment, not my ambivalence nor my
physical appearance, nothing. Yet, I remember it all, better than anything else I can
recall in the short life I have lived.
Terrified, I sat amidst Ivy and her many emerald coats, her frayed amethyst
arms beaten as badly as my own. November 19th. 3:25 pm. Cranberry sauce and acorn
trimmed tabletops, my first of many without pop, only a week away. Her leaves inviting,
drained of any bitterness or poison.

“Poetry, after all, is not a miracle. It is an effort to formulize individual
moments and the transcending effects of these moments into music that all can use. It is
the song of our species.” –Mary Oliver

It’s something about the freedoms we are open to inhabit while lying in her
garden. The only one to one correspondence that has yet to fail me is with Mother
Nature, her beautiful self. Give up the incessant need to succeed in order to, primarily,
become the bearer of otherworldly possessions. Poetry and the moments that society, as
a whole and amongst its individuals, lives a witness to during its quest for success,
encompasses the otherworldly possessions that we strive for the monetary means to
purchase. One must step away from "materially bound and self-interested lives" in
order for the fluidity of words to bear meaning to them, and step into that world that
existed way before currency, expensive clothing, expensive cars and high stature ever
had its place in a “What You Must Need To Survive In This Cruel World” dictionary.
Poetry is the only material that will never cost a cent, and yet bring one a world of
contentment, granted they believe it. Poetry allows me to say goodbye to a pain that refuses to quit, until I get it right someday. I would rather revisit that pain within the beauty that surrounds me, than spend my hard earned money trying to eradicate it with a sparkly Tiffany bracelet for an hour.