Long before the concept of “first love” entered my teenage experience, Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”, resonated with me on a profound level. As a high school sophomore navigating the complexities of adolescence, it wasn’t the romantic overtures that initially captivated me. There was no specific person who came to mind as I encountered these famous lines in class. Nor was it solely the celebrated imagery, beautiful as it undoubtedly is, that held my attention. Instead, it was the poem’s bold declaration of immortality in its concluding couplet that truly seized my imagination.
Even at that young age, I grasped the inherent timelessness of literature, its capacity to transcend temporal boundaries and achieve a form of eternity through its connection with readers across generations. However, this particular sonnet unveiled a dimension of literature that explicitly asserted immortality not just for the art form itself but for its very subject. Furthermore, this claim was directed not only at the reader but directly to the beloved within the poem:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
The subject of the poem, whether woman or man, exquisitely rendered through rich metaphors, is immortalized and, in doing so, imbued with immeasurable value and worth. This notion was transformative for me. My own lived reality as an impoverished, queer, Mexican immigrant growing up in the socio-political climate of Reagan-era America was largely absent from mainstream cultural narratives. When aspects of my identity were acknowledged, such as the limited and often stereotypical portrayals of gay men in the media, it was frequently framed by the looming shadow of a terrifying new epidemic. This pervasive invisibility and marginalization chipped away at my nascent sense of self-worth.
Yet, within the verses of this sonnet, a spark ignited – a turning point, a genesis. The final two lines, imbued with both melancholy and celebration, simultaneously acknowledging mortality while defying its finality, offered a powerful counter-narrative. Here was language capable of bestowing worth and, in that very act, of rendering the subject beautiful in the eyes of the world and, crucially, in their own eyes.
The years that followed would bring many more beginnings, many more formative experiences, eventually culminating in my own journey into poetry. My motivations for writing are multifaceted, but the initial impetus stemmed from a desire to give voice to the neglected, the marginalized, the forgotten—those aspects of existence often rendered invisible. I write because through the transformative power of language, I strive to transmute pain and ugliness into beauty, recognizing the universal truths that lie just beneath the surface of personal experience. This, indeed, is the glorious alchemy of poetry.
