Some of my New Favorite Poems, Thanks to TikTok

As an English major, falling down the TikTok rabbit hole can lead to any number of things: the cutest cardigan for summer evenings, rankings of tracks off of boygenius’ “the record,” clips of Karen and Graham from “Daisy Jones and the Six,” but more often than not, I stumble upon slideshows of poetry. Often to the backdrop of a Phoebe Bridgers or Searows song, it is often these poems that I find on a random Tuesday at 2 A.M. that wind up being some of the most beautiful I’ve ever read. Here’s some excerpts of my favorites as of late:

“To be alive! Not just the carcass, but the spark. That’s crudely put, but…if we’re not supposed to dance, why all this music?” Gregory Orr

“You can put your strength down. I’m sitting here with you at your kitchen table. You don’t need to say anything.” Eden Robinson

“I’ll rewrite this whole life and this time there’ll be so much love, you won’t be able to see beyond it.” Warsan Shire

“I have an entire forest living inside of me and you have carved your initials into every tree.” Pavana पवन

“I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.” Jorge Luis Borges

“You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart.” Louise Erdrich

“It is all about love…making someone else’s existence just a little easier…nothing else matters, I know this now.” Terence McKenna

“I begin to feel a new tenderness towards you, very raw and unfamiliar, like what I remember of love when I was young – love that was so often foolish in its objectives but never in its choices, its intensities.” Louise Glück

• poetry
• quotes
• tiktok