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Off My Chest: A Meta-Poem on Why Poetry Exists
A meta-poem on why poetry exists — for the thoughts that won't fit in normal sentences, and the quiet relief of finally finding the right form.
Every poem on this site exists because some thought wouldn’t fit through a normal sentence. This one is the meta-poem — the one about why the others had to happen at all.
I need to get certain thoughts
Off my chest
I couldn’t fit it right
With normal sentences
So I turned to poetry
And references
There’s a particular weight some thoughts carry that prose can’t quite support. The lines have to bend. The rhyme has to do part of the work that direct statement can’t. And references — because sometimes the only way to point at the feeling is to gesture at someone else who already named a piece of it.
If you’ve ever started writing a normal email and found yourself slipping into something stranger, this is for you. The thought knows what shape it wants.
— JTC