Jessica Walker – Fall 2015 Class Portfolios

Sea Lily

Jessica Walker — Fri, 02 Oct 2015 23:20:29 +0000

I love the poem, “Sea Lily,” by Hilda Doolittle because she hits on a theme that has completely enveloped my life. The thought that hardships create beauty or that places of pressure create growth is something I really identify with. In the poem, Hilda Doolittle uses a ton of imagery entertaining the idea of cutting away. It’s in this slashing and cutting that vulnerability is revealed. Vulnerability is beautiful. The idea that I can reveal my whole self is incredibly appealing. I think that is the heart cry of every person on this earth. To be fully known and fully loved. It’s in that vulnerability that I am strongest. I love the idea that weathering can turn me into something positive. Weathering creates beauty.

“REED,
slashed and torn
but doubly rich—
such great heads as yours
drift upon temple-steps,
but you are shattered
in the wind.

Myrtle-bark
is flecked from you,
scales are dashed
from your stem,
sand cuts your petal,
furrows it with hard edge,
like flint
on a bright stone.

Yet though the whole wind
slash at your bark,
you are lifted up,
aye—though it hiss
to cover you with froth”

The Well that is Writing

Jessica Walker — Fri, 02 Oct 2015 23:06:18 +0000

My heart is so overwhelmed at times, that the outpouring of my life needs to be directed into a well that I can reach into and pull out of when I need a reminder of all that is happening in me and to me. I need a well where I can keep a reminder of the lessons I learn through the hard times in life. Writing is my well. Writing is the place in which I can pour out my very being. I can turn back to pieces of writing that I have written months or years before and remember what circumstances led me to that piece. There is so much hope to be found in the past. I never want to forget why am I am who I am, and what the things that made me who I am are. This is why I write. Writing is a memorial to what has made me who I am. Writing is also healing. There have been many times where writing has been the outlet to really hard circumstances. There is something so beautiful about writing. Earnest Hemingway says, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” There is something so precious about being able to bleed in your writing, and often that bleeding needs to happen before healing.