Pretty Lynne Writes

I should be writing something else right now, but my phone has prompted me to clean out my photos – noting that the number of screenshots is in the thousands – so I started to delete some things. 

Doing so was like opening a time capsule of the last few years of my life. I went from screenshots of lists and paint colour swatches, to inspirational Instagram posts about how you can survive anything. 

It’s sort of true. You can survive a lot of things, if not everything. 

But I also took screenshots of a lot of poetry over these years, and it has been good to read some of those poems again in a different context. 

I’m a slut for 5 things, and one of them is Rilke poems. I’ve written about one of Rilke’s poems that has been very meaningful to me here. 

Another meaningful poem in my life was Rilke’s poem “Archaic Torso of Apollo.” 

I first encountered it when I was participating in a pen pal program with American poets. A poet would send a letter to a large group of people and would provide a mailing address. You could write back to the poet and say anything that seemed relevant to what they said, or life, or writing. Most of us participating were writers. If you were lucky, and I was, the poet might write back to you. He sent me a photocopy of this poem and some sage advice. 

Rilke writes about an ancient sculpture of the god Apollo that is missing its head. The poet talks about the power emanating from the bust, despite the fact that you can’t see the sculpture’s eyes. 

But it’s the final lines of the poem that sort of hit you in the gut, if you’re at the right place in your life:

“For here there is no place

That does not see you. You must change your life.”

Sometimes, you get clues from all over the place that things need to change. You get them in a poem sent by a poet you’ll never know or meet. You get them in a collection of screenshots about resilience and perseverance. You’ll get them from a voice that comes to you in the most unlikely place, giving you an instruction clear as a bell that you won’t follow until years later. 

At some point, you can’t hide from the truth of yourself anymore. You must change your life.