Poetry is the spiritual, psychological awakening of the poet’s deepest imagination, desires, emotions, human experiences, and a psychological torment and insanity, which the reader becomes either intrigued or fearful of. Their poetry, like a witch reciting an impious spell to conquer the spirits of the dead at an old cemetery underneath the full moon, conquers the darkest and untamed imagination, inner desires, seething emotions of passion, happiness, anguish, melancholy and wrath, human experiences and a psychological state makes the reader become curious and fascinated with the poet’s lyrical language and mosaic imagery. Each poetic word, each lyrical line, each tone evoked and each enchanting rhyme within a poem ignites the orange-golden flames within the recesses of our minds and flickers its’ illuminating light behind our eyes. As a writer and poet, this is how I feel and perceive poetry when I am writing itfor my readers.
From a young age, I always had a passion for writing stories and poems, specifically folklore, supernatural, and horror. Edgar Allan Poe’s poems such as “The Raven,” and “Annabel Lee,” have intrigued and captured my imagination with his unreliable, tormented speaker, the foreboding, supernatural setting, melancholy, dreaded tone, poetic structure, and descriptive, terrifying evoking imagery. People have always wondered why would I be drawn to something dark and foreboding as the supernatural and horror, even some of Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry. They could not comprehend why I would read Poe’s dark and terrifying poetry. People would scratch their heads, befuddled by my taste in poetry and writer and they would ask why I would be drawn to someone as dark as Poe. My face was composed and in a calm voice, I said, “I like descriptive words, painted settings, different tones, interesting characters and speakers, and a real story. I like Poe’s poetry especially “The Raven” because of his supernatural setting, melancholy, dreaded tone, poetic structure, and descriptive, terrifying evoking imagery capturing the speaker’s state of mind and his feelings.”
Writers like Edgar Allan Poe have the ability to bridge between the worlds of old and new legends, light and darkness, sanity and insanity, skeptic and believer, reality and imagination.
During my time at college, my passion for writing continued to illuminate and grow, like the orange-golden flame within a burgundy lantern, shinning its light through my poetic, lyrical language within my writing. It was during my junior year of college when I took an Introduction to Creative Writing with Dr. Z, a Creative Writing professor and bilingual poet and translator, who not only was a writer and a lover of words like me, but he saw how my writing, my poetry was unique from each other such as deepest imagination, desires, emotions, and human experiences through lyrical language and mosaic imagery. Dr. Z’s teaching and encouraging words have continued to play out throughout my life experiences, my writing and my poetry.
I continue to grow as a writer when I am writing either a poem, short story or my first novel I am currently working on. Whenwriting my poems, I envision the certain moment, an evoked emotion, setting, theme and poetic language as colorful and detailed glass piece to mosaic stain glass windows laid dominated within my subconscious, awaiting to be revealed to the human eye. My keen sight and imagination have also continued to flourish throughout my writing career. Poetry has become a part of my writing career for it has aided me when I am writing my short stories and currently novel through constructing and weaving imagery, setting, tone, and emotionswith using enriched poetic language. Poetry has allowed me to conquer and awaken the deepest and darkest imagination, inner and suppressed desires, seething emotions, human experiences and psychological torment and insanity demonstrated through my characters, their thoughts and interaction with other characters and situations.
Poetry is the spiritual, psychological awakening for poets and readers alike.
Christina Ciufo is a passionate writer of poetry, short stories, flash fiction, and fables; she is completing her first novel. From a young age, she always had a passion for writing stories and poems, specifically fairytales, folklore, supernatural, and horror. She enjoys writing about these genres in various forms because she believes that telling stories about supernatural forces evokes a haunting and terrifying imagination that brings joy and fright. After graduating Sacred Heart University with a BA in English, she continued to expand her writing abilities at Manhattanville College’s MFA Creative Writing Program and by May 2017, graduated with an MFA degree in Creative Writing. She has recently completed Sacred Heart University’s Education Program in December 2018 with a MAT in Teaching in both elementary and secondary. She is currently a Sunday School Teacher at St. Timothy’s. She has appeared in Gravitas, Spillwords, Ovunque Siamo, Nymphs I Writers, Vamp Cat Magazine,Truly Review and Mookychick.