In January 2023, I made a New Year’s resolution to write more poetry. For once, I actually followed through. I wrote quite a bit that year, but most of it was just okay.
What I started to notice was that all of it sounded like me, but not in that beautifully cohesive way where you can tell a piece is by Emily Dickinson or Wisława Szymborska. There was something a little circular about it.
So the following year, I started taking poetry classes and workshops with real, working poets.
I’m not sure if I’ve gotten better, but I do know this: listening to other students’ and poets’ work in the room changed everything.
I started thinking thoughts I hadn’t thought before and feeling things I didn’t expect to feel again. Just from listening to people write about ordinary moments. The kind that light you up, or break your heart, or make you want to live, but on fire.
Life is so rich and dynamic, and also boring and mundane. And you can write about all of it.
So, I created a pen name: Iris Lennox.
This summer, I’ll be publishing a book of poetry under that name. It felt like the right time to start sharing some of that work and to give that voice a little more room to grow.
I’ve been asked to create a Where to Begin page for my poetry. Good idea!
Here are the top 10 poems by Jill Szoo Wilson based on website views over the years, public response at poetry readings, and generous feedback from readers like you.
You left the room with a clumsy flourish, the door slammed quickly— reverberating force like a vacuum cleaner shaking the dust, until every corner rattled, left clean, untraceable— the map you had in your hand a plan long before anyone knocked. You ran.
But you forgot about me.
You fled the scene like a small boy whose shadows stalked him though he could not hear the others say, "That's simply the moonlight trailing behind as it breaks upon your face." Merely a shadow. I was the one whose voice you heard I was still there— I ran to the door watched you flee, from the entrance you turned into an exit.
But you forgot about me.
You closed the door with a lie. Later I closed the door with the truth— One isn't better than the other.
Yes it is.
You had a victim's mask in your pocket all along— pieces of your defense glued together at my expense wrought in a place of false pretense cutting the edges of your hands shaking at the moment of planned dispense— the past is a map.
Now I see
what before I missed.
(There is no before . . . Sure there is.)
You were the one who always showed up until showing came with a price which is not showing to give but to take what you could while fingering the razor you'd use to excise, lingering as long as I was the sacrifice— your comfort the key my love the prize your time a carrot my loyalty a vice.
But you misread me.
I was telling the truth all along— on the notes of every song in the lines of the poems and walks in the sand in the gaze of my eyes the touch of your hand the finding and seeing hearing, agreeing, unfolding, repeating, the four loves and being— freeing.
But you didn't see me.
I was there. I remember it all. I know the true parts and the ones you call false— what you call a dirge was clearly a waltz one-two-three, one-two-three, I wasn't weak— that’s never been me— life has taught me resilience, presence, when to be quiet and when to speak.
But now you can’t hear me.
I said the truth with a slam— for every action there is reaction— that's what I teach. You were "the other," my other, I paid attention in full— you had it all— then, it was a gift to you now, a gift to me because as I look back I can see we—you and me— found our way to living truthfully. These scenes lay unrevised, unchanged by your alterations— the story is the same no slight of hand will defy the playwrights’ vision like a Choose Your Own Adventure can— the plot is still thick (you know it's so) we wrote the pages created the spaces where each scene would go.
But you upstaged yourself and I left it all on the boards.
The places we graced now empty stages but stages withstand construction and striking, building up and tearing down don't change reality or the things we knew the verbs, the nouns— as the ghost light rolls on what changes is me and yes, even you— and so, we.
Jill Szoo Wilson 