by Justin Wetch
I find it interesting that by saying to someone “you just realized that you’re breathing”, you immediately cause them to go from breathing automatically and subconsciously to having to control their breathing manually and consciously. This is the power of words. It is a real, physical power— somehow, when we flop our tongues around in specific ways, audio waves are created that, when interpreted by the ears of another person, cause a real, physical change in that person such as I described above. I think that the effect our words have on the minds and probably the physical brains of others is magnanimously more powerful even than interesting little thought experiments such as the aforementioned.
This is why I am a writer. As I wrote in the poem “fingerprints” in this book, everyone you come in contact with leaves some mark, however large or small, on your consciousness. Through the magic of the printing press and the fact that you have read this book, I am now one of those people, even though you more than likely don’t know me at all.
That is my underlying philosophy of writing—the ‘theory’ of writing I espouse. The practical creation of the poems in this book, however, is a different matter.
The biggest component of writing, for me, is simply writing down every flash of inspiration you get during the day. Every one of those moments where you suddenly get an idea is a special one— they are each dots which you are subconsciously connecting into some greater picture with greater meaning. Writing them down solidifies them into the real world and, at the risk of sounding quasi-spiritual, shows your reverence and appreciation for those gifts of brilliance and ensures that more will keep coming.
I was inspired by the idea of method acting to go to extremes to write things that feel real. Method actors will often immerse themselves in the minutiae of their character and the character’s life in order to give a stellar performance. I have endeavored to do the same in writing. This has ranged from actually finding a dusty attic with a piano for “Dust on this Piano” to writing most of the poems in the nature section based on real locations in Alaska. At one point I stayed up for most of the night in the middle of nowhere with a pen and notepad in freezing weather one winter just so I could capture exactly what it felt like to see the northern lights on a perfectly clear night. While this probably wasn’t necessary, I think there’s some indescribable authenticity that this approach lends to creative work that is somehow always felt by the audience.
Many times, I just steal lines and ideas from my friends. For instance, the line “love gives the best of highs but the worst of hangovers” was stolen verbatim from something someone said to me, and serves as the crux of the story of the poem “Lithium”. Almost every poem from the Love section contains elements from stories my friends have told me about their love lives—crushes, rejections, building, fading away, breakups, the aftermath. Stealing inspiration from my friends has allowed me to vicariously accumulate more experience from which to write poetry than I ever could on my own, and for allowing me to steal from their lives I am forever grateful to my friends.
The one place I couldn’t steal inspiration from others for, however, was the Personal section. That required a great deal of introspection and trying to get to know myself as if I was another person. While I wrote about Society because we are all part of it, love because we all feel it, nature because we all see it, and life because we all live it, I wrote about myself because I felt that this arc of life that I was attempting to convey through this book was incomplete without an intensely personal mark of my own inner self. This allowed this work to change from an almost clinical observation of completely outward events to an intensely personal sharing of life from myself to others, which is what I wanted to achieve.
When I had figured out the general topics I wanted to talk about, I had to decide what I wanted to talk about in each individual poem. I decided early on that I should limit this book in size so that it represented only the best of my work. I wrote over 400 poems for this book over five years (perhaps the majority written in the final year of the project in which I truly was certain I would make a book out of it) and so I still had an excess of poems to select from. The criteria I decided for whether a poem should make the cut was this: if this poem was the only thing I could say to a room of 2,000 people, would I still say it? This requirement forced me to create only the truest and highest quality things I could create. I hope you loved it.
Photo: “The Wave” first written draft
Photo: The dusty piano that inspired “Dust on this Piano”
Photo: Scene that inspired “A Butterfly, The Universe”
Photo: Scene that inspired “The Death of Summer”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Justin Wetch is an artist, poet, photographer, musician, pretentious egomaniac, and messy-haired fool from Palmer, Alaska. He published this book at the age of 19 while a freshman at the University of Alaska Anchorage. He enjoys artistic endeavors and connecting with people.
Posters, prints, and more:
www.justinwetch.com
Photography on Instagram @JustinWetch
Rambling thoughts, occasional humor, and shameless self-promotion on Twitter @JustinWetch
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Malachi Paulsen was born in Ketchikan and raised in Wasilla, Alaska. He currently lives in Plains, Montana. Malachi started drawing when he was about 12 years old, pursuing the art of realism. Artistic talent runs in his family. Along with drawing, Malachi is an avid health and fitness enthusiast. Bending The Universe is the first book Malachi has illustrated, at the age of 16. He enjoys creating life from paper and graphite and challenging himself to develop more eye for detail every time he pick up a pencil. Malachi uses drawing as an escape into worlds of complexity and beauty and make them feel real on paper. Malachi enjoys artistic pursuits and hopes to pursue a career where he can use his incredible talents to make the world a more beautiful place.
Follow his art on Instagram @MalachiP_art and @Big_Leazy on Twitter.
