Hello, my name is Spyros Constantinos, and this is my blog dedicated to poetry. I have been a poet for many years now, although I still cannot ever hope to match the majesty of some of the great poets who have come before me. To give you a bit of a context for this blog, you would probably like to hear the story of how I became a poet and a lover of poetry.
Let’s begin when I was in high school. At this period of time, I never dreamed that poetry would come to dominate my life in the way that it has. In fact, I had hardly even read any poetry. Perhaps in some of my early English classes I had been required to read some poetry, but like most young boys I was perplexed by the words. I still had much to learn about life, and the words simply didn’t resonate with me. Instead, I spent most of my time doing what normal high school boys do. I played for the football team, and I spent my afternoons hanging out with my friends outside the local music store. I was quite obsessed with music at the time. Perhaps lyrical music was my first introduction to the power that words could have over my soul. Of course, I didn’t know this at the time; I liked the music because it “sounded cool”.
In my sophomore year of high school I began to experience that feeling of existential angst that typifies the lives of so many teenagers nowadays. I lost all interest in school, and I would spend most of the day simply wandering around in the woods and hanging out near the creek. I found school unbearable. There were always bells going off and teachers telling me what to do. When I actually was in school, I spent most of my time in detention.
My conservative parents were naturally horrified by this, so they sent me off to boarding school. It was at this school where I met a man who would change the course of my life forever. His name was Mr. Peterson, and he electrified our classroom. He showed us the beauty of the words of Shakespeare and Walt Whitman. He assigned us a poem to read from Leaves of Grass, and I couldn’t put the book down. Within a day, I had finished the whole book. I excitedly rushed to my peers and began quoting passages to them from the book. Amazingly, I was able to recall many of them by memory even though I had only read them once.
I began to read some of the other Transcendentalist poets and philosophers like Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. I was completely absorbed in their works. I stopped watching television, and I stopped reading any other contemporary works. Soon I felt as if my entire mind had been changed and transported to the past. I was having difficulty discussing this transformation with any of my friends or family, so I decided to start a poetry club. I wanted a place for a small group of poetry lovers to get together to read and discuss poetry. When I tried to get official approval for my new club from the boarding school, my application was denied. I was told that ancient poetry was not fit for a man’s mind, and instead I should begin a book club dedicated to the New York Times Bestseller List. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to read those popular books, so I decided to take my poetry club underground. I rounded up a few recruits, and we began to meet in secret. We would have to read our poetry by candlelight and talk in low voices so that our illicit club wasn’t discovered.
After boarding school, I went to college to study literature. After a semester, I couldn’t stand it. I wanted to live in nature and in the world like the great poets and writers of old described. I didn’t just want to read about life; I wanted to live it. I dropped out of college and purchased a van. I lived in the van and drove from town to town all across the United States. I would spend my days reclining in parks reading poetry. It was around this time that I really fell in love with Shakespeare. I read every single one of his works in a month’s time. The next month, I read them again. Soon, my van broke down, and I had no money to fix it. I decided to hitchhike up into the mountains of Maine and live a life of solitude. I found a man who would permit me to build a cabin in the woods next to a lake on one of his properties. I performed odd jobs to pay for my basic food and necessities, but the bulk of my days were spent hiking in the woods. It was in that cabin in Maine where I really began to work on my own poetry in earnest. Free from the constraints and authority of society, I let my soul pour onto my paper. At first my poetry was terrible. I noticed that it always seemed to resemble the poetry of whomever I had last been reading. I hadn’t yet found my voice. Yet every day I sought to fill up at least 5 pages of notebook paper with my poetry, and sometimes some beautiful words were brought forth.
After I spent 5 years in my cabin writing poetry, I began to feel a yearning for my fellow man. I decided that I had learned what I had set out to learn, and it was time for me to return. I began to tell people that I was a poet, and they would ask me to write a verse for them. When I did, they were always quite pleased. Some of my friends said that I should create a blog dedicated to poetry where I could talk about poetry and publish some of my poems. You are now reading that blog. Please enjoy.
-Spyros Constantinos
Spyros Constantinos | Poetry Blog 