*Laura Muensterer, the German-born, Texas-raised twenty-three year old poet who now calls Southern California home, empathically states, “poetry means freedom,” the moment we sit down and I ask her why she has chosen to publish her book of one hundred poems in an age of short attention spans and pop culture madness. To Muensterer, poetry is the deconstruction of the human experience in all its glory; something young people can quite easily relate to if given the opportunity.
Much the way stand-up comics view the autonomy of their work, Muensterer shares, “I love poetry, because, you can create your own style and structure and call it poetry, and nobody can negate that because it is a subjective artform.” She admits she also finds comfort is needing less punctuation and other gratuitous literary distractions that take away from the emotion she puts down on her pages. “Anything creative doesn’t put boundaries around it, so you can express yourself in a way that feels natural.”
The one hundred poems throughout Muensterer’s debut poetry book, freebird, eloquently express the pressure we all feel for mass approval and acceptance; the discomfort we universally experience from emotions like self-doubt, heartbreak and loneliness. More uplifting and spirited poems in her book express the desire to break free from the illusion of everyday life, to liberate oneself from how the world sees us, and to transform ourselves into the “freebird,” unencumbered and with wings to fly.
BARACK AND MICHELLE OBAMA BUYING $15M MARTHA’S VINEYARD ESTATE FROM BOSTON CELTICS OWNER
Much of Muensterer’s work is symbolic of her transition from corporate work at an ad agency to calling the shots as an author of her own work. “Working at an ad agency was grueling,” explains Muensterer. “You can come up with a million headlines or slogans, and your Creative Director tells you to go back and do it again. It’s a frustrating process for a creative person.”
When I ask what her peak creative zone looks like, she relents that some of her most inspired poems have been put to paper during times of despair, or what she refers to as being “in an emotional rut.”
“When I have no control over what is going on in my life, it is therapeutic for me to take control by expressing myself freely on the page through my poetry. There is a lot of nostalgia in freebird, because I am reflecting on the big questions that haunt us all.”
As for the book’s title, it’s a symbolic call-to-action for the young poet. “My whole life, birds, and more specifically doves, have showed up in my life during some pivotal moments, and I feel it is no coincidence. It was only fitting for my debut work to be titled, freebird. It holds so much meaning for me.”
Below is the book’s title poem, which graces its back cover:
freebird
I once was a caged bird
Trapped in a made-up reality
Suffocated by my own ideas of
Right and wrong
Good and bad
Perfect and imperfect
But then one day
I decided to challenge my delusions
And get rid of all the useless confusion
Suddenly my wings were no longer clipped
My beak was no longer tied shut
I was finally free from the imaginary cage
I had created within my own mind
That had temporarily made me blind
To the beauty and evil of mankind
freebird, the debut poetry book by Laura Muensterer, is available on Amazon. Visit her on Instagram @afreebirdflies
We Publish News 24/7. Don’t Miss A Story. Click HERE to SUBSCRIBE to Our Newsletter Now!
