A mind filled by the heart sees a world full of beauty and compassion.
© Rachel Wolfe
Poetry, Prose &Suche VOL I.
First edition 2023, electronic distribution. Text and Images by Rachel Wolfe.
The poems contained within this volume were drafted circa 2006-2009, in Chicago, USA, and edited during spring 2023 in Paris, France, with the enormous support of The Trélex Residency.
Contents
. ignorance . intensity . indignity . iniquity
Ignorance
to fail to notice
to avoid understanding
to lack and to want
Rewriting these books has been terribly sad. I began going around saying I hate poetry and genuinely feeling that as true. I hate writing too and words in general. I’ve never enjoyed grammar, syntax, or the uncertainty of what I’m saying landing properly in the listener or reader.
In editing these poems, I could see self-indulgence, flippancy, painful reaches towards joy, and all the places where I cut myself off, didn’t speak up, or follow through with what I wanted to say.
The words in these pages revealed how an individual self subjugates for the sake of others.
This kind of virtuous way has no moral, and perhaps revealed to me 13 years later the root of my depression was myself. Perhaps the root of the depression for many others too is the holding back of expression.
As souls we are here having experiences and have awareness of each other. We can know very well the meaning of the golden rule and pretend to ignore the consequences of our actions until they catch up to us.
We are catching up with ourselves, and reality is holding up a mirror all the time. If I ever write poems again, though I swear not to, I should do only as the gifted camera does for me, aligns the panes of a frame as an impression of what is there. Describing as a witness gave me the nutrition of truth. While I’m never entirely sure what happens within a reader, my intention is for a safe space for whatever these words give to you.
I held back because I was afraid. Afraid of hurting someone, afraid of being wrong, afraid so long until I abdicated my own voice and buried it in a word document that nagged on me until I decided to just do this and then set it free into a world like a kite without anyone holding the string.
I put myself and my soul in compromising positions. I made deals that hurt me, that kept me trapped in lies, which is another word for story. I saw the lies other people were telling and used that as justification to continue holding back telling myself something was ok when it wasn’t.
Rewriting has been a process of writing reality. Authoring something coming through me, that inspired another question about who I am. Who is Rachel? it’s a name. And what about Marie. Is accepting what is given what we are? Or can we author and be agents of truth. Instead of stories, I wonder if these words will describe a reality in a way photographs do. To realise oneself as bearing a pen in hand, shows the pen stronger than the sword. The pen has the ability to form, carve, penetrate, evoke tears, make us bleed, alter our cellular structure.
I read somewhere reality is in black and white. And colours are the aromas of the stories. Black and white images document what occurred.
Words, we speak to each other are not just words. They are actions and objects we catapult at each other. Verbal abuse is a spiritual abuse of wars people wage on each other for any given alibi. Words can warp or distort and pretend to not be said or done, like any imaginary tool. They happen in the realm of our spirit.
And so I do want to apologise for any of the words in these pages that caused pain. I never want anyone else to have to endure these things if they don’t have to. If we could lessen each others darkness and be more naive and sincere, that is my prayer woven in these pages.
As the black and white impressions here are, the things I went through. They self validate through the power of the pen. A power we all have that gets activated by remembering.
I trust somehow we will all remember the truth. In time.
INTRODUCTION: Vol I