Can poetry affect the way we see the world?

Image: MSOMI Bora

Growing up, poetry meant privacy. A quiet time to express myself, not a secret code exactly, but in a way to explore and process my emotions and fragmented thoughts. Sitting in the privacy of my childhood bedroom with my door closed. The window open, letting in the sound of wind rustling through the 20 foot oak tree outside. I’d write poem after poem about what was going on in my life as a teenager. Boys. Friends. Dreams. Weight. My sister’s death. My cousin’s death. The meaning of life. Boys.

When I graduated from high school, I stopped writing poetry, until decades later when I retired. Actually I re-engaged with poetry right before I retired. Toward the end, whenever I’d become restless at work, I’d remember how much I craved the creative act of writing. How I’d committed to spending more time feeding that part of me. The little voice inside that spoke up during my stroke recovery years before, asking - where do you want to be spending our energy?

April is Poetry Month. When reading an article about Ada Limón, poet laureate of the United States, I was struck by her observations after she zigzagged across the country. “Every time I’m around a group of people, the word that keeps coming up is overwhelmed.” Her advice — read poetry because it helps us slow down.

Each poet laureate selects a signature project to help spread the word about appreciating poetry. Ada’s project: “You Are Here: Poetry in the Parks” features site-specific poetry installations in seven of our US national parks. She’ll be visiting those parks for the rest of this year unveiling picnic-table installations connecting poetry to each park.

We recently returned from a week in Joshua Tree, complete with full moon, Jumbo Rock clusters the size of small buildings, and double rainbows as a storm approached. As I read about Ada’s project, I hoped to find Joshua Tree as one of the parks chosen. When it wasn’t, I wrote a poem of my own.

What is poetry? What happens when we read and write poetry? Can poetry make sense of our fragmented thoughts and affect the way we see the world?

Unsplash: Jr Korpa

what is poetry?

According to Susan Wooldridge in her book poemcrazy, the word poem comes from the Greek word poein, to make. As Susan says, ”In collage, as in many poems, you reassemble fragments of found or collected images to make a new image of your own.” I love that concept of reassembling fragments. Writing poetry, for me, is very much about fragments.

Once retired, I decided to submit my poetry, reconnecting to my bond with e. e. cummings and Emily Dickinson. Going to an all girl Catholic high school, we were expected to follow the rules. We were groomed for compliance, but at the same time there was an expectation of finding our own paths in life.

Although I don’t remember the exact poem, I do remember how I felt the first time I read e. e. cummings. My breath caught in my chest. I imagine my head tilting and the wave of a new perspective rolling over my body. My mind absorbing what a renegade his work represented for me. His disregard for conventional grammar, his sculpted phrases — opened a doorway to a clandestine freedom I craved. How subversive I felt breaking all those rules I was conditioned to follow. I adopted his lowercase punctuation immediately. Tried it on. Felt empowered. Decades later when I re-read my journal entries using lowercase “i” — I cringed and wanted to tell my younger self "You deserve a capital I!" The renegade woke up in me while the feminist was still in training.

Emily Dickinson, has the same birthday as me, along with Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer. The symmetry of my writing and computer life captured in a little birthday serendipiosity, as John Cusack from the movie Serendipity would say. Emily was a prolific writer, but because of the times she lived in, she only had 10 of her nearly 1,800 poems published. In a way, she gave me permission to focus on the writing, not worrying so much about the publishing.

Recently we finished Dickinson on Apple TV+, a comedy series “exploring the constraints of society, gender, and family from the perspective of rebellious young poet Emily Dickinson.” One of my favorite characters was Death — think a combination of Snoop Dogg and Johnny Depp, who visited Emily by a ghost horse drawn carriage.

Since most of Emily’s poems are untitled, the first line became the title by default. One of my daughters gave me a book of Emily’s poetry published after she died. In the series, as Emily is conjuring her poetry, cursive dances on the screen as she composes. While watching, I’d hold the blue leather book on my lap and when Emily started imagining her poetry, I’d search for the first line in the index and quietly read the poem along as she envisioned them. Emily’s advice to “Tell the truth, but tell it slant” — whispers in my ear to this day whether writing poetry or prose.

Image: ze-robot

thought fragments and poetry

For this month’s thought echoes podcast, I interviewed Susan Wooldridge, the author of poemcrazy, who I rediscovered after I retired. We talked about how poetry and thought fragments are likely companions. Poetry helps us make sense of the world in ways different than prose. Poetry allows the peppering of images and leaves gaps. And like all works of art, poetry is subjective. Each of us engages with a poem differently, with our own feelings and responses.

Susan states, “Poetry is in a different class of writing. It’s almost a mystical way of going within ourselves and making discoveries about who we really are.” One of her techniques used during creativity workshops with students and adults alike, is making word tickets. You physically cut out words and paste them onto the backs of raffle tickets. “Sometimes randomness creates a tack, a leap that makes us go somewhere new.”

When writing about my strokes years ago, poetry seemed a perfect container for the fragmented nature of my thoughts. During recovery, words would bump into each other trying to get out in the right order. ”wrong word dinner” captured my humbled sense of what was happening inside and around me when I was clearly was not able to close the gap between what I intended to say and what did or did not come out of my lips.

During the interview I asked Susan how people can tiptoe into poetry. “Have a journal next to your bed and poems will start arriving if you invite them. Poems are like ground troopers with laser beams illuminating caverns within. They bring messages from and about our deepest selves, broadening our respect and reverence for who we are.”

One of my favorite sections in Susan’s book is Chapter 56 apo - ka - taś - tasis from the Greek, to set up again, to restore. She describes what it felt like when her boyfriend was shipped to Vietnam and she felt like she was unraveling.

She quotes the end of Rumi’s poem “The New Rule / The bowl breaks. / Everywhere is falling everywhere. / Nothing else will do.” Susan’s new rule: “Break the wineglass and fall toward the glassblower’s breath.

Gives me goosebumps every time I read that phrase.

Unsplash: Jr Korpa

what happens when I read or write poetry?

In their book Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us, Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross, say there’s recent neurocognitive research on how poetry affects the brain:

“A poem that truly resonates with us does so at a neurological level by stimulating the areas of the brain that are associated with meaning-making and the interpretation of reality. Poetry, at a cognitive level, can help us make sense of the world and consider our place in it.”

— Your Brain on Art

Our brains have two hemispheres. Like twins, they work together and know what the other one is experiencing, yet process the stimulus differently. Our left brains are more analytical and organized, and notice patterns. Our right brains interpret sensory input through imagines and make connections through metaphors. When reading poetry, like other art forms, each experience is subjective. Some people are drawn to meter and rhyme in the beauty and elegance that paints a mental picture. For others, freeform word painting in poetry taps into our emotions.

Another chapter in Susan’s poemcrazy is a story about her first poetry workshop with fourth and fifth graders including a student named Frank. She was talking about trusting and listening to ourselves in one of the ten sessions. Susan felt like she was feeling her way in the dark. The way most poems are written.

Susan referred to Frank as a chair-banging “ringmaster" of anger, who only wrote standing up. She asked the kids to write a poem about their names. He started Frank: forceful, raging, angry, nervous. Susan interrupted him and asked, Frank can you please find one nice word to say about yourself? After a pause, he said — kind. Susan saw a shift in Frank. He went from that angry little boy to her scribe. Poetry can change people.

e. e. cummings Noise No. 13

can poetry help makes sense of how we see the world?

In poemcrazy Susan suggests another reason to write poems, is to capture moments of awareness that lead to a shift. Next time you’re journaling about some aspect of your life you’re writing through — try making a list of words and phrases based on the emotions you’re feeling, then write a poem. You might be surprised by how the poem creates some connective tissue expressing the way you are feeling and what you are working through.

Poetry is both a form of artistic expression and an emotional onion-peeling, encouraging introspection and helps build an understanding of self. According to The National Association for Poetry Therapy — “At the time of this writing, we are in the midst of national and international crises relating to violence, natural disasters, the COVID-19 pandemic, homelessness, women’s rights, civil rights, and so much more. Poetry offers voice, constructive action, and hope.”

In early 2023, the editors of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) decided to include poems in their publication and also publish commentaries that examine each poem’s theme, context, and relationship to physical or mental health. They cited several studies showing both patients and their providers “can find comfort and meaning in poetry.”

Recently, Susan Magsamen shared an article with me from the International Arts+Mind Lab about research using Emily Dickinson’s poem “Hope is the thing with feathers.” In one study, pediatric patients were given “poetry writing kits” for reading or writing poetry. The study found a reduction in fear, sadness, anger, worry, and fatigue.

Many of us use our journals to work through sticky areas in our lives, some may find giving poetry a chance helpful. You might create a list of words around the emotions you are feeling. Put a timer on for ten minutes and write a poem, free-form or any form you’re drawn to. Poetry taps into your subconscious in a way that takes you places you might not have otherwise gone.

If you feel adventuresome and would like to spend time writing poetry, I invite you to join me with Susan Wooldridge for a special thought echoes writing group on May 8 at 10 AM PST. I'd love to share some subconscious time with you.

As our poet laureate says, “It’s so meaningful to lean on poetry right now because it does make you slow down.” When you imagine every line break and space between stanzas representing a pause, poetry can help teach us take a breath to help us make sense out of the world and our place in it.

I'll leave you with the poem I wrote about Joshua Tree.

Joshua Tree

a blanket of quiet

envelopes me

while cactus arms

catch

my wandering 

breath

towering granite clusters

remind me for a moment

of my smallness

in this vast

precious

space

—Beth Bonness

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