Poetry Explainers

This poem was written for a challenge prompt by the page @madpropslive on Instagram. In this challenge writers would submit the name of an artist they would like to base a work on and the curators would send them a specific song by that artist. I chose Eminem and was given Cleanin’ Out My Closet. From that song I took the line’ “all this commotion, emotions run deep as oceans explodin’”, leading with and letting the poem build itself from that. There is rhyme but no rhyme scheme and really the work flowed out from the story being told. Since it was inspired by Eminem I wanted to focus on keeping a sort of hip hop rhythm. When you say the first you can hear a rhythm that carries you through to the end of the line. I tried to maintain that feeling of being carried throughout the poem. Additionally Eminem is brilliantly talent at rhyming similar sounds through whole lines which gives his raps such great flows. I tried to emulate that as best I could here. A friend asked me about the meaning of the song. Specifically he asked me if it was about a relationship I was in awhile back. Now my friend had a particular concern; namely that I wasn’t still hung up on something from the past. Now I told him that the poem was about a Muse, a way of saying about no one just the idea of relationship gone sour. But really from a creative aspect I don’t see how I could write such a poem without looking back at that relationship. At least when I was thinking about the feelings that would be involved. A writer can only write from experience, so even if I did not start writing the piece because of that relationship I can write a more genuine piece drawing inspiration from it.