An Ode to Poetry: Presence and Processing

An Ode to Poetry: Presence and Processing

On Dec. 14, like many other students, I boarded the first flight home after experiencing something I could not process, and perhaps still cannot. The atrociousness and spontaneity of the shooting overwhelmed me, and as I sat on the plane, I was in a transient state of confusion. I thought back to other times I had felt lost, and for the first time in months, I turned to poetry. I began writing lines slowly, letting each word and stanza create sp…