I’m eighteen and I don’t know what to do with my life. Do you think this poem is any good?

I’m a tree made of bones
Reaching up to the sky
With my crooked wooden arms stretching high
And with my thin ivory skin I’m standing in the purple field
And I run, I run, I run from the sun

And I am a fleshless rabbit
All fur and bones
Staring with my big blue eyes
And I run, I run, I run from the sun

And now I call for the moon
And I call for the olive trees
But all I can hear is the sound of the willows
Shivering in the wind for me

Dear Lilly,

Thank you for sharing your poem. When I read it I experienced a variety of feelings. I thought the first verse was good, but it felt a little derivative, and I didn’t particularly respond to it. But I reminded myself that you were eighteen and, like most young people, primarily an assemblage of your influences. I certainly was myself at that age, and I didn’t produce anything that felt truly original until I was in my early twenties.

Then, I read your second verse and I felt that pulse of excitement I get when I come across something that feels fresh and authentic. The image of the fleshless rabbit running from the sun was powerful and haunting. Your third verse was even more compelling. It seemed like you were revealing a kind of truth, something that was uniquely yours, a sort of Lillyness! I think there is something powerful there, Lilly – it holds such beautiful and poignant potential. I hope you don’t mind but in my enthusiasm I took the liberty of removing the first verse and doing a light edit. Editing is a process I employ on all my songs, in an attempt to peel them down to their essential nature. I called your poem, ‘The Rabbit.’ If you don’t like what I’ve done to it, no harm done; it can always be returned to its original state.

THE RABBIT

And I am a fleshless rabbit

Staring with my blue eyes
With thin ivory skin

I run from the sun

I call for the moon

I call for the olive trees

I call for the willows

Shivering in the wind before me

I think this is a wonderful poem. I wish I could have written something this interesting at eighteen. You could add another verse to it, but I like it as it is – it feels like it has been stripped back to the bones, like your marvellous image of the fleshless rabbit itself. It reminded me of the Austrian poet, Georg Trakl. Do you know him? His most famous poem, De Profundis, is similarly sparse and fragmented and, like yours, filled with despairing, expressionistic imagery. De Profundis is written in German, so you have the great fortune of reading it in its original language, but here it is in English –

De Profundis

There is a stubble field on which a black rain falls.
There is a tree which, brown, stands lonely here.
There is a hissing wind which haunts deserted huts –
How sad this evening.

Past the village pond
The gentle orphan still gathers scanty ears of corn.
Golden and round her eyes are gazing in the dusk
And her lap awaits the heavenly bridegroom.

Returning home
Shepherds found the sweet body
Decayed in the bramble bush.

A shade I am remote from sombre hamlets.
The silence of God
I drank from the woodland well.

On my forehead cold metal forms.
Spiders look for my heart.
There is a light that fails in my mouth.

At night I found myself upon a heath,
Thick with garbage and the dust of stars.
In the hazel copse
Crystal angels have sounded once more.

Do you notice the similarities to your poem, Lilly? Perhaps De Profundis will inspire you to write more – it had a massive impact on me when I first read it at your age.

As for not knowing what to do with yourself in life – I wouldn’t worry too much about it right now. Who, at eighteen, truly knows what they want to do? Your talent is obvious, so if you want to write, that’s always an option. Perhaps the writer’s spirit is calling to you even now as you tentatively offer up your poem – the moon and the olive trees shivering in the wind before you – perhaps you are the spectral rabbit running towards the melancholy moon, which is art, which is poetry. But at this moment, don’t trouble yourself too much with all that. Just figure out how to love life, how to trust it, how to stand in awe of it, how to enjoy it. Stay alert and be aware – life has a way of drawing you in, of insisting upon your involvement. The world, with all its wild and clamouring demands, will find you soon enough.

Love, Nick

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