Anarda Nashai

Poet, Author...Visionary.

Blog: This Writer's Life

Queen LibertineYes, I am a poet who does not tolerate love poetry. I’ve admitted this repeatedly to those who insist that poetry couldn’t have survived this long in none other median than the ultimate universal language. As one recent pioneer of the love to hate love poetry club, my dedicated fan base of lamented lovers with either pre-marital jitters or post-coital regret has become a little boring. So now, I’m after the rest of them… By my quill-wielding hand, and with those itemized lyrics that I keep free from my own work, I use all of my imagination to come up with the first line of my love poem. I want to be original but lingering. I want to write something that will stand alone in history and yet, won’t have future generations tempted to use the foundations of my work as toilet paper. Challenging my own cynical viewpoint, I am convinced that I must at least attempt to write a love poem, so long after knocking them still. “Inspiration!” I summon with the snap of my fingers… My quill and I began to trace invisible clouds above my head, as I’m in need of the sun with all of its blinding glory. And further, birds that chirp Beetles’ songs and are never the subject of swarthy innuendo. Now, I have the infamous sky that starts the perfect loving day. Still inside my mind, I step into my own scene: A grown woman, but young still. All of the cream-filled stories of love I’ve been told as a girl are buff and glinting behind my hungry eyes. They are my armor, the first words of infatuation --overplayed in my mind through teenage-hood. The deep-monotone of his voice is unmistaken: “I Love You.”. Absolutely, today—I am thinking. In a moment of love this day is exactly when and where I will fall. While I am walking from my perfect job, with my perfect waist size—the perfect size of my breath mint still left inside my mouth, I turn a corner and crash clumsily into his arms. The passion in his eyes? No competition for the fantasies that I am waiting to project onto him – this humble place holder who will be my new and unsuspecting prey of romance. Leaving no room for doubt or harsh reality of what falling for a stranger on a corner will do to me thereafter, I’ll decide that he will be my love. He will give me more of what I need in order to pen this fresh job of mine on the page. And please, don’t worry about me tarnishing my reputation as a philosopher at all. You see, since I am as always the pain-loving poet, this nonsense will be justified. All that comes after the first sentence will be the rolling snowball before the effect. I’ll be a fool in love, so that I might describe its new luminous planting in my life, as it comes and goes. I’ll be damned if I use a thesaurus or sit around in pink lace all day, waiting to trade places with the heroine of the latest Collins’ novel. Everyone would just have to understand, that as a love poet, I don’t have time to wait for the itch of that illusion. Whether I search for a picture of fact or faux, I have a commitment to this feeling of mine, here and now. In this time and space, where I am on the cusp of this love, while this feeling of mine lay parallel with every happiness I’ve known on every other day when I have been deliriously happy, I must write now… None other than the wind through my open window derails my unreal pie in the sky. I bring my arm down to earth, no better off a love poet as I was before…go figure! Quite the adventurer--my poetic eye. This eye of mine is the blue pigmented rose with thorns as thick as its stem. It won’t allow me to see why and how I may be approaching this project of mine all wrong. A wise woman once told me that having faith in a thing is the foundation for success of the same. Readers of love poetry know this to be true. Yet, I’m ever convinced that this loose-thread of a theory can’t be as easily accepted by a poet. No way. So I’ve chosen to retire my heart-shaped pen and writing pad and to leave the nay-sayers where they belong: on the highly-favored, fairer road of optimism. Had we ended up on the same side of this brick-wall of a controversy, I’d have no one to wave to or even moon when I’m feeling a little restless with my daily routine. I’ve digressed and lay obliged to them, while I beg that I may be released from my unwanted obligation with the very word: Romance. Simply put, all poets must say it, although we fear that the bad taste will always linger each and every time. I accept that the romantics of the world are entitled to their loyal opposition of my “angry poetry”, just as I am of all their “pertinent sap”. Here is the truth as far as I am concerned: Love poets do not exist. Only poets who are sure that they have more remarkable descriptors for the roses and the violets attempt to exist as such. To their credit, they are brave entities who dare to hold themselves up in their own air-painted world—a place too fragile and susceptible for my lazy gust of evening wind. A lover of love must accept this truth of illusion throughout their careers. A poet has no such constraint. And so, I shant be in business with poetry and with love together. I read once from one of my many poetic curators that the only poets that learn from one another are bad ones. I’m sure he meant this in a less venomous sounding way than I have perceived it. Still, with his words he’s taught me a great deal. He and I share the same faith in the validity of this jaded genre. I’m like you Sir, who rather the poet would throw the towel in before they settle their steam engines on the topic of romance. It’s easier and more impressionable to do the thing with the towel, isn’t it? So, to all of my self-actualized brothers and sisters, heed our curator’s advice, he who has paved our ground so that we brooding poets may never live without rank ever again. Thank you, Sir Arthur Rimbaud...your crown fits quite nice. PRECOCIOUS...or Just Plain Destined?A Personal Sketch of Poet and Author Anarda Nashai…
(School Girl: Poetry and Prose of a Pre and Post Adolescent
E-book now available for purchase at Lulu.com)

I’ve loved words from the very beginning. Since reading the Canterbury Tales by Geoff Chaucer in the fourth grade, I have no earlier, more satiating memories of my life as an avid reader. And, I read with fervor thereafter, soaking in the art before I actually put pencil to paper. During the next couple of years, I couldn’t help but to mock my favorite writers, writing down random thoughts of mine—feeling the need to record them for future reference. At thirteen, after seeing a poem that had been spray painted on the side of a building, I was hooked. My curiosity would peak--then pop and overflow into THE pastime of my lifetime.

I went to school and wrote what I'd seen on my desk, unable to keep it out of my head. My teacher noticed that I'd defaced school property and was prepared to send me home with a note to my mother (oh no) until he read the words.

"Do you know what this is?" He asked me. "It's something I read on the way here." I told him. "This is a poem...do you know about poetry?" He continued.
I didn't answer him right away. It was another week before I would express interest in learning more. He gave me a paperback collection of poetry and short stories written by African-Americans during the Harlem Renaissance.

And that was only the beginning of my obsession.

Over the years I've fallen in love with the whole of literature. As poetry will always be my first love when it comes to art, I credit Countee Cullen, Robert Frost, Sonia Sanchez, Anne Sexton, Arthur Rimbaud and several others who have encouraged me in ways that they could never imagine...not only as a writer, but as a thinker--a dreamer. During my junior high and high school years, these pioneers had become my mentors, my emotional sponsors...my best friends. I thank the Heavens that they were published...for I have no idea where I'd be if they hadn't been there for me (if only pertinently) during the most impressionable years of my life.

Now in my late twenties, I have concentrated more on writing fiction for the past few years. I came across some of my old poetry journals in recent years and was totally shocked by what I was reading--what I had written over twelve years before. These were my unofficial diaries, words I would die before I'd share...outside of a few submissions for high school English class assignments. After years of harboring my work, I decided October 15, 2008, that I would take what I considered the best of these journals and publish my first poetry collection. And thus, School Girl: Poetry and Prose of a Pre and Post Adolescent was born-- a prime example of how far and wide a little positive influence and inspiration can travel. -A

This CommonplaceYes, I know...the title may be a complete give away. Especially after my rant more than a few months ago. You know, the one where I can imagine that I will one day be chased with grocery carts and baby strollers by mobs of self-righteous "domesticates". ...and I’ll swear that this scenario is only a child of my imagination. No. I don't wake up sweating and shaking these pictures from my head and nightmares (not that I would admit it if I did!). I ain’t scared of you frying pan wieldin’, dingy house coat-wearin’, toddler number three-on-the-hip balancing wenches! (I actually say this in my dreams). BRING IT ON!!!!Since I've not been swept away in the "brood and breed" craze that has engulfed my generation within the past five years (whew!--I knock on wood for luck), I thought I’d shed some light on what I’m sure is one of the biggest pet peeves in the life of most toxic bachelorettes. Recently, one of these “single-snatchers” responded to the nameless ever-popular question (I don’t need to list the question, do I?):“Of course I want to get married and have a family! And now that I’m thirty years old…I’m ready to grow up and start my real life.”Grow up?...Start my real life? I guess it was too much for me to expect originality in her answer at the very least…for her to recognize her own hypocrisy by insinuating that a grown up would blindly and knowingly simulate an entirely different life simply because they are expected to do so after the age of eighteen. In essence, this is the sort of thing that an impressionable child would do—to avoid stigmatism. Right?Personally, I believe that people can get away with saying anything they want, if they would only choose their words wisely. For a moment it seemed that I wasn’t interested anymore in whether she even believed what she was telling me, so I have to applaud her for at least giving me something more to dwell on than this re-affirmation of hers. (ok…there’s my only attempt at unsolicited advice-I promise!)I can’t tell you what a relief it was to hear it all again though (it never looses that new car smell, does it?). Had it not been for this weak philisophical regurgitation, I would have assumed that hell had finally frozen over. This fleeting script of a response is as familiar to me as the mole under my right eye: some days I won’t notice it at all, while on others, I have no choice but to acknowledge that it’s there.Before I go on, I’ll admit that in a world where my view point is in the minority, I will not pretend that some of these women may genuinely want to incorporate marriage and children into their lives in search of their own happiness. In fact, it is a beautiful thing to celebrate the engagements, weddings, and announcements of forth-coming extensions into these families of my friends and relatives. I love them, and I love that these events make them happy. So I’m there for them always. Period. Please don’t mistake me for one of those strict, bra-burning feminist types. There’s nothing like a good piece of wedding cake every now and then…and I LOVE me a good piece-o-man just the same!My problem with my counterpart’s answer is what did lie there beneath her actual words. With her hands on her hips, staring off into space (trying to find an explanation that may convince me of her sincerity, no doubt), her words connote that she had recently been handed her own words in the form of advice from either her mother, aunties, friends…and article from Parent’s magazine. Why would you ask me such a silly questions? Her attitude spoke to me in volumes. My response is universal, right? What the hell planet are you from?Then she continued aloud.“That’s what all women are looking for. Isn’t it?”Before I turned to leave, I thought I’d make my position clear. While trying not to suck my teeth and shake my head, I guess I was a little evasive when I said:“I believe we are all looking for happiness.”…and whether you believe it or not….I didn’t wince at her conjoined naiveté-- …or shame myself by answering her question “favorably”. -Anarda Nashai