Keeping Your Balance With and Through Poetry
By K. Allen McNamara
During illness the body seeks balance or homeostasis. This is the reason why when the body is fighting a virus it will run a fever; it will trick itself into shaking, into having the chills even as the internal temperature soars to destroy the invading virus and thus restore equilibrium. Poetry does the same thing for the psyche and in turn may save lives.
Why Poetry during Grief and Chaos?
In October 2001, the New York Times’ Dinitia Smith reported that people were using poetry to heal and to console:
“In the weeks since the terrorist attacks, people have been consoling themselves -- and one another -- with poetry in an almost unprecedented way. Almost immediately after the event, improvised memorials often conceived around poems sprang up all over the city, in store windows, at bus stops, in Washington Square Park, Brooklyn Heights and elsewhere. And poems flew through cyberspace across the country in e-mails from friend to friend.”
Smith’s article included an interview with then poet laureate Billy Collins and inquired as to why poetry was the response in this time of Grief. Mr. Collins said: ''in times of crisis it's interesting that people don't turn to the novel or say, 'We should all go out to a movie,' or, 'Ballet would help us.' It's always poetry. What we want to hear is a human voice speaking directly in our ear.''
Mr. Collins went on to compare the status of the poet in contemporary society to that of a hockey goalie. ''The goalie in hockey stands apart from others, marginalized,'' he said. ''When all the skating and sliding around on the ice begins to fail us, the goalie is the poet.''
The implication being that the Goalie is both the best defensive and the best offensive player and when the rest of the team is struggling it is to the Goalie that they look for balance.
But does Poetry save lives?
Jill Bialosky in her memoir, contends that poetry can save your life. Bialosky is an accomplished poet, novelist and non-fiction writer. In her memoir: Poetry Will Save Your Life, Bialosky points to poems that have throughout her life guided her, comforted her, strengthened her, educated her by opening her eyes when she was blinded and buoyed her as she treaded water. The chapters, or rather sections of her memoir, appear as headings. These headings operate rather like signposts or exit signs on the Bialosky’s life journey. They are emotions or life events: Wonder, Envy, Mystery, First Love, Friendship to name a few.
Each heading/exit sign is highlighted by the poem that will be featured in the particular section. A connection is then drawn between the snippet of Bialosky’s life and the featured poem. How they are entwined --Bialosky’s life event with the poem or poems-- is revealed by the poem itself. Each poem provides a portal into that section of Bialosky’s life and the poems both underscore and illuminate these portions of Bialosky’s life. She begins with Discovery and with A Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. Under the heading: Shame she weaves through the articulate and poignant beauty of Langston Hughes’ You and Your Whole Race and I, Too. Other headings with the corresponding poets follow: Marriage (Louise Bogan), Faith (Emily Dickinson), Sexuality (Sharon Olds), Prayer (Li-Young Lee)....Sometimes more than one poet shines the light on Bialosky’s life’s signpost: Motherhood and Passion, have four poets; Grief, Envy, Suicide, Family and Friendship and several others have two poets. Some life headings only feature one poet with one poem and that poem speaks volumes. Each poem pierces the heart of the heading (or the characteristic/plot point if you will) of Bialosky’s life and she shares these connections graciously.
Bialosky accomplishes what poet Ben Lerner says all poets aspire to do: “to launch the experience of an individual into a timeless communal existence” and she does so by sharing the poems that have done just this for her.
Does Poetry heal?
Robert Carroll, a poetry therapist, writes in his article Finding the Words to Say It: The Healing Power of Poetry, proposes that poetry should be utilized for healing, growth and transformation. He states:
“In mainstream culture there are subjects that are not talked about. They are taboo. For example, each of us is going to die, but we do not talk about dying. We are all in the dialogue of illness, death and dying, whether or not we are talking about it. Poetry gives us ways to talk about it.”In short, poetry gives us a way of talking about the Elephant in the Room.
Carroll also contends that we need to learn to read poetry differently than the way we’ve been taught. We have to pause when reading poetry not race through it. Carroll writes: “The passage below is derived from a conversation I had with poet Li-Young Lee on the relationship between poetry and breath and life and death. When you read the passage, pause after each line and take a breath in. Feel for yourself the emergent meaning.
All of language is spoken on the out breath
All of life begins on the in
All of death is spoken on the out breath
All of life begins on the in”
Carroll’s point is clear. If you did as he instructed and paused and inhaled you would recognize the rhythm that is indeed breath.
We need to experience the poem as we read it which means we need to read it out loud. This is something we always have known but something we often forget. A link to his article appears below and it is an enlightening and informative read on poetry as therapy.
Further Carroll concludes:
“Healing is frequently thought of as taking place at the level of the individual. But if healing is viewed as a process that brings us back to wholeness, then in addition to happening within the individual patient, healing can also take place between patient and family members, between patient and the larger community of which they are a part, and even at the level of the community as a whole. In fact healing is often necessary on many of these levels simultaneously.” Again an echo of what Lerner speaks of when he writes of the poetry’s mission to take the individual and make it communal.
Like the body seeking equilibrium during illness, poetry may be the balm to the wounded soul, the grieving heart, or the angst driven mind. Poetry can restore ballast. But we need to give poetry a chance; we need to give it breath. So don’t hurry by poetry section in the bookstore, or flip past it in your literary journals or magazines. Take time to stop and smell those poetic roses - read it out loud. And who knows, it could save your life.
Below links to the articles cited in this work.
