Poetry v. The World: I like the Rain

I don’t know about anyone else, but I get really annoyed at how much I like rain. Seriously, it’s just water… you think I’d get tired of looking at it but I never do haha.

Anyways, I was actual very hesitant when deciding to use this poem. I feel like talking about the rain (or nature itself) in public poetry is too over-done. It’s like a cheat-code for writers because mostly everyone knows the material you’re discussing. When the audience immediately knows the concept of your poem, half the battle is over and you can just sound cool for the rest of it. Writing about a natural phenomenon is a very good exercise for writers to start, but it makes it very difficult to elevate your writing to something deeply profound or personal. At least, that’s been my experience with it.

So, why am I telling you this if I just showed you a poem that I wrote about rain?? Well, I will tell you… And it’s not because I think it’s a deeply profound poem. When I took this video, I had just wrapped on a project that I was working on for the past 6 weekends. After 17 days of shooting, (nearly the amount of time they spend shooting feature-length movies) we were excited, a little saddened, and most of all exhausted. After the hardest day of shooting yet, we wrapped. Then! It began to rain and the sun was just about to set, unobscured by the clouds. I don’t think the video does it justice. It felt ethereal.

But yeah, so this occurrence happened right in a moment when I felt something deeply, and that is always a special moment. I didn’t write this to push boundaries, but I felt that I needed to express this part of my life in words and video, so I did. After all, that’s kind of a poet’s job, isn’t it?

Many thanks, I hope you all the best in the final weeks of this semester! And remember to look out a window every once in a while and get lost.

Best,

Jonah J. Sobczak

-jonahso