THE COURTING RITUALS OF CHAMPAGNE BOTTLES
—from 2018 Rattle Young Poets Anthology
__________
Why do you like to write poetry?
Mayte Taipe: “Up until I was about thirteen, I had no interest in poetry. I, like some people, thought that poetry was unnecessary, difficult, and just a fancy way of articulating something simple. That all changed for me when I actually began studying poetry and approached it from an academic point of view, and not that of the average teenager. These days I have a lot more respect for poetry, and I prioritize it above fiction and creative nonfiction. I enjoy writing it because the art form challenges me as a person and as a writer. To elaborate, there is so much I want to say, but so little of that I am able to actually speak or put forth publicly in a way that conveys my emotions and thoughts to other people. Poetry gave me a method of taking everything that troubled or confused my soul out and depositing it onto a page. I learned how to organize all of this in a way that both my reader and I could understand, and that in turn helped me to deal with some of my own issues. That’s why poetry is so close to my heart—without it, I wouldn’t have a way of making sense of who I currently am.”
