Poetic connections
Poetry. The word might bring back memories of school, of being supposed to remember what a simile is and how to spell onomatopoeia. Or you might think of a favourite poem, one that has become an old friend or holds dear memories.
I used to write reams of it, in the way that only a gothy, introspective teenager can. All lost now. I studied it a bit in my first studies at uni, though I preferred Shakespeare’s tragedies. It didn’t figure in my life at all for years and then I had to work out how to try to interest bored teenagers in it when I had a brief foray into teaching. In that roundabout way, I’ve come back to enjoying it, and I’ve been able to seek out the kind of poetry I want to read and hear.
A special kind of language
Poetry is a special kind of language. It breaks grammatical rules and the sounds of the words almost come alive (a metaphor) as they are spoken. It plays with our human desire for meaning, seeing parallels between our thoughts and emotions and the worlds we inhabit. It seems to be able to connect with our emotions direct. When Wendell Berry talks of worrying in the night about the state of the world in The Peace of Wild Things and then says:
“I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things”
I can feel that sense of calm suffuse my body. It’s not my brainy self responding, it’s my nervous system going directly into soothing rest mode.
All this means that poetry naturally seems to offer itself as a therapeutic medium, whether you’re reading it or writing it. Here I’d like to share how I’ve connected with one of my favourite poems, Wild Geese by Mary Oliver, in a therapeutic way.
My overall feeling on reading it is a wonderful sense of belonging in the world and of having worth that is not contingent on the rules of human societies. And I like to work with these lines:
“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”
Have a go…
What are the things you tell yourself you have to be or to do? Do you really have to? Are they aligned with your values, who you are and what is important to you in life, or are they expectations from outside, from other value systems? I write them all out: You do not have to _________; you do not have to _____________; you do not have to____________________...
And what are the things you’d rather do, the things that feel right, in body, mind and spirit? The important things? You only have to… Maybe you could check in with yourself like this every now and again to touch base with what you value in life. You only have to ____________; you only have to _____________...
Perhaps you’d like to try this - remember there are no rules here, your handwriting doesn’t have to be legible and you don’t have to spell things correctly. Or perhaps you’d like to discover what poems or poets are the ones that feel right to you. Some of my other favourites alongside Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry are Rumi, Ryokan, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Rainer Maria Rilke.