Shane Koyczan Made Me Cry:

How good is Shane Koyczan's poetry? If you're not familiar with Koyczan's work, you're going to want to put some time aside, have some tissues nearby, and be ready for a lot of tears. His poetry dances on the edge between madness and genius. It'll make the sun weep, angels kneel, and gods listen.

To put it in the words of some of my favorite authors, it will break your heart and in the next moment mend what's broken so that you're twice what you were before. It will lift you high and put you down in a better place. It's like the past and the future never existed.

Here's an excerpt from his poem To This Day:

despite a loving husband

she doesn’t think she’s beautiful

because of a birthmark

that takes up a little less than half of her face

kids used to say she looks like a wrong answer

that someone tried to erase

but couldn’t quite get the job done

and they’ll never understand

that she’s raising two kids

whose definition of beauty

begins with the word mom

because they see her heart

before they see her skin

that she’s only ever always been amazing

-Shane Koyczan

I usually prefer to read, but he at his best reciting his work. Watch him at his website here giving a presentation at TED. He starts out with "so many of you." My reaction to the presentation is"so beautiful."