Young Writers Project is a creative, online community of teen writers and visual artists that started in Burlington in 2006. Each week, VTDigger publishes the writing and art of young Vermonters who post their work on youngwritersproject.org, a free, interactive website for youth, ages 13-19. To find out more, please go to youngwritersproject.org or contact Executive Director Susan Reid at sreid@youngwritersproject.org; (802) 324-9538.
Looking out across the breadth of a bookstore, literature in its totality can feel as expansive as the universe — and within it, we find a thousand universes in miniature. In seeking to educate ourselves or escape the humdrum, we traverse through time and space, across seas and over mountaintops; we visit grand ballrooms and grungy dives. Where do you like to travel, though — and why? This week’s featured poet, Scarlett Cannizzaro of Essex, reveals the word-worlds she tarries in and what they teach her about life and learning.
Life through literature
Scarlett Cannizzaro, 17, Essex
Someone asks me, “What is your favorite book?”
I say, “I do not know.”
How can I choose?
How, in this world of
thousands upon thousands
of genius letters and
inimitable phrases,
can I choose but one?
Words thrive in my blood.
They race through my veins,
they battle and suffer
a war for which hold more sway –
a war that will never be won,
as there are simply too many words
to sit still with comfort.
Words are alive in humans.
Humans ingest words as if
they are honey to a sore throat.
We read books, but more so,
we think about them,
our minds grasping to keep a hold
on the complexities
so quick to slip and slither away.
We listen to music,
the dance of literature;
we write poetry,
the passion of literature;
and we argue:
the wit.
At heart, we read to learn.
We read to learn the value of friendship,
of adventure and imagination.
We read to learn how to be smart
with our own choices,
our own actions,
our own words.
We read to learn what we love.
Literature is here
to help me when I am hurt.
It heals,
it protects,
it comforts.
I bury myself in sentences,
cozying up under the quilt of
children’s stories
my mother read to me when I was young.
I open creaking doors of paragraphs,
watching dust whirl
and settle around the stories
I wrote in fifth grade.
I sift through essays and speeches
of someone else’s words
as if I’m searching the archives
of another mind,
bothering not to change anything –
just to look,
just to understand.
Humans consume and create literature
for so many reasons.
For some, the soft lilt of prose
offers an escape into sleep each night;
for others, the thrill of a cliffhanger
leaves them hopelessly awaiting more.
For me, literature is about life.
It is here to help me understand the past,
the past that I missed;
to help me cherish the present,
the present that can be so difficult
yet so immensely intriguing.
And it is here to help me imagine the future,
because no one likes traipsing blindly
through an inky-black unknown
and literature lights my way.
Words are more valuable than any item I can think of,
and they say a picture is worth a thousand of them.
So the picture of my life someday,
the one I see when I close my eyes,
the one with drive
and love
and challenge,
it must be pretty priceless.
