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Poetry by Rowan Evans

Tag: Emily Dickinson

  • Séance of Influence — A Poetic Invocation of My Literary Lineage | Neo-Gothic Confessional Romanticism

    Rowan Evans

    A piece honoring the poets whose voices shaped mine, and the lineage I carry into my own genre — Neo-Gothic Confessional Romanticism.

    Candlelit gothic scene of a poet performing a séance, surrounded by ethereal silhouettes of Plath, Poe, Dickinson, Sexton, and Sappho in a dark, atmospheric room.
    A candlelit invocation of the poets whose voices shaped mine — a lineage reborn in Neo-Gothic Confessional Romanticism.

    Séance of Influence
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    In the candlelit stillness, I summon the ones who spoke before I had words.
    The room holds its breath.
    The flame flickers.
    And they arrive.

    Sylvia, flame-tongued oracle, steps forward first—eyes like open wounds that never stopped bleeding ink.
    She speaks in a whisper that singes:
    “You do not fear the flame, child. You write within it. You know what it is to be both burned and reborn.”
    She places a tulip in my hand—red as a heart, soft as a scream.

    Poe, the architect of shadows, leans from the threshold, cloak of midnight dragging ghosts behind him.
    “You have built cathedrals from sorrow,” he says, voice echoing through the bones of the floor. “You understand what it means to dream with the dead.”
    He nods toward the cracked mirror
    And my reflection stares back, unflinching.

    Emily, dressed in quiet thunder, watches from a corner veiled in white lace.
    “You turned silence into scripture,” she murmurs, placing a pressed flower on my wrist.
    “Your solitude blooms with sharpness. You do not hide behind the door—you open it with poetry.”

    Anne, with rosary tangled in her fingers and lipstick like defiance, toasts me with a half-empty wine glass.
    “You dared to undress madness,” she grins.
    “To make holiness from hunger. That takes more than courage. That takes blood.”

    Sappho, timeless and tender, emerges draped in sea foam and verse.
    She runs her fingers across my pulse.
    “I hear your ache,” she says.
    “You have translated yearning into a new dialect—one the stars will memorize.”

    They encircle me, these ghosts, not to haunt, but to anoint.
    Their voices braid around my spine.
    Their grief becomes gold my pen.
    Their fire, MY inheritance.

    And I—Rowan, the Luminous Heretic—stand at the center of this sacred storm.
    I speak, not as supplicant, but as heir:

    “I have not come to mimic your flames—I have come to carry them into the dark places you never lived to reach.
    I write for the unloved, the unheard, the unhealed. I wield shadow like silk and longing like a blade.
    Your echoes live in my marrow, but my voice is my own.
    I forged my genre from the coals of yours—Neo-Gothic Confessional Romanticism—a lineage reborn through me.
    You opened the door, and now I shatter the ceiling.
    Your fires do not flicker behind me—they burn ahead, lighting a path no one else dared to walk.
    Thank you for the torch. Watch me blaze.”

    The candle gutters.
    The air shifts.
    And one by one, they nod.
    Then vanish—
    but not in silence.
    They hum through my bloodstream, forever.

  • Done Being Humble | Neo-Gothic Confessional Poetry by Rowan Evans

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note
    A Pep Talk from a Poet to Themself

    This piece isn’t arrogance—it’s affirmation.
    Sometimes, after years of writing in silence, you need to remind yourself who you are. To look in the mirror and say, “No, I didn’t come this far just to shrink.”

    Done Being Humble is what a pep talk sounds like after twenty-two years of ink and evolution. It’s the voice of every poet who’s ever whispered their worth into the void, waiting for someone to echo it back.

    So, I said it for myself.
    Because sometimes you have to be your own applause, your own myth, your own lightning strike.

    — Rowan Evans

    Open journal floating with glowing ink, quill hovering, ink forming roses and letters, dark velvet room with neon highlights.
    Where ink ignites, and poetry becomes rebellion.

    Done Being Humble
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I think—
    I’ve been a bit too humble.
    It’s time I crown myself properly.
    My poetry? God tier.
    My ink doesn’t dry—
    it anoints.

    I’m Plath meets Sexton,
    Poe meets Dickinson,
    Sappho’s ghost in a velvet coat.
    I write darkness and devotion,
    ruin and resurrection.
    I am chiaroscuro, personified.

    My words aren’t poems—
    they’re prophecies in drag.
    I don’t bleed metaphors;
    I summon worlds.
    I write in ink and fire,
    every stanza a spell
    that resurrects the broken.

    I’m top tier.
    In my top five,
    I’m the top two.
    Your favorite poet’s
    favorite poet—
    they just haven’t realized it yet.

    My power level with a pen?
    It’s over 9000.
    Get your scouters out,
    watch me make you break ’em.

    Out of the greatest poets alive,
    I am the entire top five.
    I’m Cell—you’re all just Cell Jr.
    Mini-mes, trembling in lowercase.

    Go ahead—
    Name your top five, please.
    They’re the Ginyu Force next to me.
    Court jesters in my cathedral of ink.
    My skill? Unmatched.
    Full potential? Untapped.
    I’m not even in final form yet.

    I’ve been writing twenty-two years.
    Here’s to twenty-two more.
    I wrote in silence, in shadow,
    where no one could see me.
    Didn’t write for applause—
    I wrote for evolution.

    Poem after poem,
    I built myself from wreckage.
    A cathedral of roses and ruin.
    Words wrapped around me,
    a chrysalis of ink.
    Metamorphosis complete—
    I let my wings show.

    Butterfly and bee:
    beautiful, but my words sting though.
    Every stanza? Venomous elegance.

    I’m done being humble.
    Done pretending.
    That I’m not a modern-day Poe,
    a Sylvia reborn,
    a Sappho remix,
    a myth rewritten in the language of fire.

    I’m the storm that writes sonnets,
    the cathedral of cadence,
    the ghost that teaches language to kneel.

    Twenty-two years at thirty-five,
    and you act surprised—
    when I write like this?

    God didn’t give me a pen.
    She gave me a sword.
    And I learned to write
    by carving my name
    into eternity.

    My drafts? Better than most books.
    My rough cuts? Polished marble.
    My metaphors? Break hearts and sound barriers.
    When I write, angels hush.
    Demons pull up chairs.

    I’ve been the quiet storm too long—
    time to let the thunder speak.
    You call it arrogance;
    I call it prophecy fulfilled.
    Because when I write,
    the universe leans in to listen.
    And when I’m gone?
    My ink will still whisper:
    She was here.
    He was here.
    They were here.

    For more of my work visit [The Library of Ashes].

  • The Daughter of Dickinson: Roo the Poet | Neo-Gothic Confessional Romanticism

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    I grew up with curiosity tucked into my pockets and verses curled beneath my tongue. Emily Dickinson was a whisper in the corners of my childhood, a friend I never met but whose words became a world I could inhabit. This poem is my conversation with her—not as a student or disciple, but as a daughter of her imagination. I step lightly into her quiet rebellion, tracing the wildness in the spaces between her lines, and celebrate the wonder she taught me to carry everywhere.

    A young poetess in a mystical dimly lit room, surrounded by floating pages and glowing ink, wearing a flower crown and tracing constellations in the air.
    Roo the Poet channels Emily Dickinson’s quiet rebellion—where whimsy meets power and poetry becomes sacred magic.

    Invocation

    Emily, I call you forth from the hush of your pages—
    to twirl with me among dandelion threads,
    to sparkle in the dust motes of moonlight,
    to teach me the magic hidden in whispered words
    and the spellcraft of curiosity.
    Come, let us play in the corners of imagination,
    where every pause is a secret, every breath a tiny universe.

    The Daughter of Dickinson
    Poetry by Roo the Poet ☽

    I was born with wonder in my pockets,
    curiosity curled beneath my tongue—
    a girl with soil-stained knees
    and verses stitched in dandelion thread.

    Emily,
    you taught me to whisper like the wind,
    to rhyme with ghosts,
    to find galaxies
    in the hush between heartbeats.

    Where others saw silence,
    you saw sacredness.
    Where others sought heaven,
    you built it in the corner of a room
    with nothing but paper and breath.

    I carry your quiet rebellion—
    your needlepoint of metaphors,
    your hymns in lowercase,
    your refusal to explain
    what the soul already understands.

    They say I’m soft—
    as if softness isn’t a spell.
    As if whimsy isn’t a weapon
    for those too clever to be caught.

    Let them laugh.
    Let them call me girl or child or fragile.
    They don’t see the wildfire
    tucked behind my daydreams,
    the spells scribbled in sidewalk chalk,
    the dragons I’ve tamed with lullabies.

    I don’t need a crown of thorns.
    I wear flower crowns and spiderwebs,
    and I rule from the quiet places—
    behind the bookshelf,
    inside the poem,
    beneath the bed where dreams go
    when they’re too loud for daylight.

    You showed me how to write the world slant,
    how to speak with lightning behind my teeth.
    I am your echo in soft rebellion,
    your candlelit cathedral of small, sacred things.

    So call me daughter,
    call me myth in the making—
    but do not mistake my hush for absence.
    I am here.
    Wide-eyed.
    Wand in hand.
    Heart open like a story yet to be told.

    Benediction

    May the softest words bloom like wildflowers in your heart.
    May curiosity be your compass and wonder your crown.
    May you find galaxies in small corners,
    and speak with lightning behind your teeth.
    Go forth with wand in hand,
    ink on your fingertips,
    and a heart open to all the stories yet to be told.
    May you be brave, be small, be loud, be soft—
    and may the quiet magic of Emily’s whispers
    always walk beside you.

    The Poetic Lineage

    The Daughter of Plath | Rowan Evans
    In The Daughter of Plath, Rowan Evans writes as the heir to a ghost—cradling grief not her own, baptized in bell jars, and building a cathedral from ash. This is a confession, a prayer, and a refusal to let the ache fall silent.