As a poet, i've been thinking a lot about poetry lately and suffering with it as well. Poetry was always a thing i could count on. My words would be there when i needed them and they would never sway from me or turn away. Yet lately, words do not come so easily and i find myself in a rut of sorts, having to find new topics to write about and feeling, for the first time since i was very, very young, unsure and uncertain of my words and the way i use them.

All said, i still write poetry, but the focus has become almost too narrow and i find myself using exercises just to change my subject because i want to flex those writerly muscles a bit, do something new, pick a part that's new, as they say.

I've heard that every writer is looking for his subject and i quite agree - we are, we all need to find our subject and when we do, we need to hone in on it and focus. That's our job. But what if you find your subject or vice versa and your subject sucks? What if you subject has been done a thousand times before and a thousand times better and yours is boring or worse, not even worth looking at?

Then i say you haven't found your subject; that you must keep searching and stretch your boundaries and flex the brain a bit. If you believe your subject is yourself, your marriage, a relationship - familial or otherwise - then try writing about something completely unrelated, say a painting that moves you or an experience that you had that you never thought worthy of a poem. I once wrote a poem about tripping down the stairs in high school and lo, it became one of the best poems i would ever write - which may not be saying much, but it says enough. It says that the subject is what you make it. That you do not wait for the subject to find you, but you go out like a big game hunter and you seek it. You take your sleek self like a jaguar through the brush and when you find your prey, bite down hard and clamp your jaw and do not let go for dear life, for this will be literally your life's work as a writer, as a poet, and what you must pursue. Like any bard, it is almost a duty. If you have some gift of poetry, of language, then it is almost, though not quite, an obligation to write.