The first of a series called bad habits and guilty pleasures.
Matthew Hittinger is a poet whose guilty pleasure is to collect characters from and dress up as his favorite superhero. ‘She-Ra’, like many superheroes, has a secret identity. Being a poet is my secret identity when I am out in the world watching, observing, recording. Just as she must chant words to transform into her super-powered self, I must use words to transform from my daily, mundane self into the thinking voice I have come to know as my true voice when writing a poem—the voice that is hypersensitive to the world, in tune with patterns and secret knowledge, able to explore the contradictions all around us to help others really see. She also leads a great rebellion against an invading empire, despite all the odds, and I persist in my personal struggle to continue to write poetry in a country and modern world that has little use for it.
- Subject Matter: Portrait