Poems can shift our perspectives, spark new thoughts and open pathways for healing.

April is national poetry month and almost every day, I have been reading a poem. 

The power of poetry is often overlooked because it arranges words in ways that are unlike our everyday speech. This unfamiliarity can be off-putting. But that very unfamiliarity invites us to slow down, to listen differently, and to feel deeply.

Poetry reaches past the surface, touching emotions and truths we may struggle to articulate in ordinary language. 

My mother’s love for Psalms, and Joyce Kilmer’s poem Trees, introduced me to the power of poetry early on.

I grew up hearing her recite her favorite psalms and poems in a manner that was incantatory, spell casting, magical. She showed me how poetry could be a friend, a companion in struggle. I experienced poetry as a way to shift my state of mind and connect with something deeper.  

We can say things with poetry that are hard to say, hard to say because we can’t find the words to capture the range, the contradictions inside us.

Poetry to the rescue! Poetry wields imagery, metaphor, alliteration, rhyme and rhythm to create a language world we can inhabit and that can inhabit us. 

Years ago, I studied poetry, and spent an especially marvelous week in Tahoe studying with tremendous poets, Lucille Clifton, Sharon Olds, Yusef Kumanyakaa, Galway Kinell and Li-Young Lee. 

Every day, both the attendees and the teaching poets, wrote a new poem  Every day, I felt the confusion of oh no, what am I going to write about?, felt the click of oh yes, I know, and then sat down at my keyboard, savoring the flow of laying down words, changing them, reading them out loud, then writing and rewriting my daily poem. 

When I came back home after that magical week, I let drop the so-called hammer of reality – “Oh Sande”, I told myself, “What are you going to do with all that poetry stuff.”  You need a job, a real job, a practical job, a job that helps people.

I put away my love of poetry.  

Recently I took an online class called Poetry as Healing with Joy Roulier Sawyer. Joy spiced up the class with her red glasses and Frida Kahlo earrings, her dark black hair piled up in a rowdy bun, her face lively with emotions as she spoke – curiosity, enthusiasm, encouragement, reflectiveness.

Through the class I learned about the fields of poetry therapy and bibliotherapy that use words and poetry and texts to help people acknowledge and move through emotional pain and navigate challenging transitions.

What makes poetry a tool for healing is that our “feeling-response” is more important than an intellectual interpretation of the poem’s meaning.

I love this because it moves us away from believing that we’re not “getting” a poem. When poetry feels like a puzzle we can’t solve, then we feel locked out and frustrated. 

During the class we would read the poems using the 4 stages of the bibliotherapy model:

1. Recognize an emotional connection to the poem.
2. Examine the poem deeply, exploring its relevance to your life.
3. Juxtapose your response with others’ perspectives, noting similarities and differences.
4. Integrate your experience of the poem by writing your reflections and considering any actions you might take informed by your reading and reflections.

This approach liberates us from the need to “get” the poem. Instead, we focus on connection—to ourselves, to others, and to the text.

One of the poems we read was Derek Walcott’s poem: Love After Love. Each time I read this poem an emotional resonance goes through my body, what Joy Roulier Sawyer described as the “feeling-sense,”  a feeling of yes, and understanding.

Here are a few lines:

“You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread, Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you”

When I repeat out loud these phrases, I feel deep compassion toward myself and forgiveness for the ways I have misunderstood what was most important to my spirit and my aliveness.

Through these words, Derek Walcott expresses what it is to be estranged from himself. And he shows that there can also be a homecoming. In this poem, he invites me to come home to myself, to heal my own relationship with myself.

Poetry can be transformative. Reading poems can shift our perspectives, spark new thoughts and open pathways for healing.

Instead of being stopped by language that perplexes, we can read a poem for that feeling sense, we can savor the words that resonate with us, nourish us, and let go what doesn’t.

What is your relationship to poetry? Has it spoken to or nurtured you over the years? If you feel distanced from poetry, consider these prompts:

• If I were not afraid of poetry, I would ___________.
• Poetry reminds me ___________, which leads me to ___________.
• If I thought of poetry as healing, I would ___________.
• The poem or text that helped me recognize I was not alone is ___________.
• Healing, to me, means ___________.
• Beauty in language means ___________.
• When I hear healing language, it feels like ___________.

Poetry invites us to feel deeply and connect with ourselves and others. It’s not about decoding a puzzle but about feeling and being nourished by the essence of the words and what they mean to us. Let poetry be a companion on your journey, guiding you toward self-discovery and healing.