Intro post
Hello, I am the forgotten poet. I would tell you my name, but I know you would only forget it as soon as you read it so I won’t bother with the gory details.
All that is important for this blog is that you know I am a poet, and I have a lot of things I would like to write about which I feel I cannot speak about aloud.
That, and I finally have an excuse to show off how much I love the etymology of words.
For the purposes of this blog (and just because I want to), let’s dive into my title:
Forgotten
What does this word mean?
Well, let’s go back to the beginning. Forgotten is derived from the word forget, but where does that come from? It comes from the Old English word forgietan meaning “lose the power of recalling to the mind; fail to remember; neglect inadvertently”
To be forgotten is to be lost from memory.
The mind tends to forget what it deems unimportant or too traumatic for us to handle. If we try hard enough though, we can remember things we thought we had forgotten. But what if the mind was right to forget some of it? What if, you wish you hadn’t remembered it or wished you could choose to forget some of what you have always remembered?
Just some food for thought.
Poet
This word is a peculiar one.
It doesn’t really have a straight path to its history.
The Century Dictionary would define it as follows, “one endowed with the gift and power of imaginative invention and creation, attended by corresponding eloquence of expression, commonly but not necessarily in a metrical form”
But what does that even mean?
The source of the word comes from the Greek word poētēs, meaning “maker, author, poet,” it is a variant of poiētēs, from poein or poiein, meaning “to make, create, compose.”
In its essence, then, the word poet is a way of describing a creator or composer of words.
Whether or not they are successful is up to them and the grace of their audiences.
I do hope I have found the right audience.