Childhood and the Poetic - Carter Jobe
Recently I stumbled upon a post with the quote, "We're all born poets, but slowly we forget."
It came along with the story of a three year old girl proclaiming that she found a piece of night as she held up a sheet of black construction paper. This powerful quote made me think greatly about the correlation between the innocence and curiosity of a child with the sense of the in class discussion of the Poetic vs. the Prosaic.
It was explained that the Prosaic describes straightforward and evident things, such as science or what is directly in front of us. As adults, we use this in our day to day life, doing assignments and accomplishing tasks. Ultimately, the stress of being on go 24/7 that often comes with an adult life drowns out the Poetic in us all.
As children, when we didn't carry these burdens, we let our imaginations run free. We saw the world in a much different light, the Poetic. Through the lens of curiosity and the magic of not knowing, we saw many things as much more arbitrary. The three year old girl wielding the piece of night is a beautiful example.
To summarize, there's something magnificent about the blissful ignorance of being a child, and the insights into our poetic sense it enables. We could all learn, or perhaps unlearn, something from children.
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