Being a writer has led me to look for inspiration wherever I can find it. Boston has a rich literary history that leads writers and readers to immense inspiration. Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and so many creative minds all walked and wrote about these fascinating city streets.
That cobblestone you just lost your footing over? Louisa May Alcott tripped over that exact step while holding a version of “Little Women” on a Boston outing one day. Well, that may not be entirely true, but Boston is laced with the magic of writers whose legacy continues to adorn the doors of homes with rusted plaques.
If you’ve never checked out the (semi-hidden) Boston Athenaeum on Beacon Street, let me persuade you to weave throughout the many floors of this secret library, just as countless writers weaved before you. With an art gallery and half a million books, it is impossible to not feel inspired and deeply connected to our city’s past.
The first book of poems to be published out of the North American colonies was written by Anne Bradstreet, a woman living in none other than the lovely city of Boston (take that, classical Puritan values and gender roles!) Walk the streets of Boston, overcome the lingering misogyny of Bradstreet’s time, and take the spirit of her honest poetry to create your own.
Become a part of Boston’s hipster literary crew, gaze into the sky blue eyes of another creative mind, and start stealing some of the wispy spider webs of creativity left around the willows of the Public Garden. Author Robert McCloskey and poet Robert Lowell used Boston’s Public Garden as settings for their writings.
For the morbid sensibilities so often found in inspired minds, take a seat in the Forest Hills Cemetery park area near Jamaica Plains. I dare you to not write an amazing poem while gazing upon the gravestones of E.E. Cummings and Anne Sexton.
Now, not everyone is a player of words or a poetical lyricist, but I can assure you that even the most artistically repressed mind can find their literary imagination in Boston. Home to so many classic authors, poets, and writers, this city is overflowing with inspiration and palpable creative magic still lingering in the cobblestones.