I haven’t always read poetry. My teachers at Pacifica Graduate Institute reintroduced poetry and for whatever reason I was open and receptive. Now that I have incorporated reading poetry into my daily meditative practice, my life is much richer as a result. I’m embarrassed to say that part of my resistance was because I would read a poem and not understand it. There was an abstraction to poetry that I found difficult to overcome. A way that my teachers reframed reading poetry was to introduce the idea of active reading - a critical reading technique that strives to discern what the poem says to you. No right or wrong - it’s a way to reflectively consider a text. Another aspect of reading poetry that clicked for me was that for the first time I read poetry with color and music in mind. Somehow understanding poetry in terms of color and music helped me to get the aesthetic meaning and “rhythm” which aided in my understanding. Trying to visualize helped me to see poems as stories or songs. I offer this confession because I suspect there are others who avoid poetry for various reasons.
Another factor influencing my thinking about poetry is how I started reading about poetry - For examples:
Octavio Paz - The Bow and The Lyre. Paz described the poet as going to the other shore and bringing back a word. In this way we partake in transcendence, we connect to the divine and are dialogically connected one to another. One of the many things I’m curious about is inspiration - this idea of artists or poets in this case going expressly bringing back words from experiencing transcendence is fascinating, changing the way I approach poetry and its importance.
“[Poems] are the incarnation of something that transcends and surpasses them. . . like bridges that take us to another shore, doors that open on another world of meanings inexpressible by means of mere language.”
2. Wendell Berry essay in What are People for? entitled The Responsibility of the Poet. He writes about the power of poetry as a reminder.
“A poem, that is, has the power to remind poet and reader alike of things they have read and heard.”
This idea of being reminded has me wondering what is it we need to be reminded of. In part, the power of poetry is the way it connects us to the transcendent, mystery, and awe. In the busyness of our modern lives we can lose touch with the depth of human experience in ways that is numbing. Reading poetry offers this connection with that which is beyond us. Thus the reason I encourage others to read poetry - to provoke the heart reminding us of our individual and shared humanity.