A Roman physician, Soranus in the first century A.D., was known to prescribe drama—composed of poetry—for healing. He recommended attending tragedies for his manic patients and comedies for his depressed patients.
For many centuries the connection between poetry and medicine remained in people’s consciousness. Pennsylvania Hospital, founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1751, used bibliotherapy, reading and writing, as useful treatments for mental patients. Dr. Benjamin Rush, “Father of American Psychiatry,” believed in the effectiveness of music and literature. In all these instances, the evocative power of poetry and the access poetry grants to emotions and catharsis were appreciated as paths to healing. We can see how poetry opens us to parts of ourselves that may not be found otherwise. The resolution of problems and the healing of our emotional wounds can happen as we bring poetry to specific stresses that face all of us.
Writing poetry can also be a pathway of spiritual growth, emotional growth, and healing. Contacting our spirituality through poetry does not mean that we must write religious poems or haikus. Any poem can lead to awakening when approached with mindful attention. This is because its subject is the present moment, yet from it arise primordial and immortal images.
When poetry is approached as a spiritual practice, it mirrors the phases of a heroic journey, a central and universal theme in the myths of all cultures. The three phases of the heroic journey are: leaving home, passing through struggles, and returning home with gifts. When we sit down mindfully to write a poem, we begin at home in our here and now world, with a resounding yes to what is. Then we launch out into the complex, conflicted, and yet empowering reaches of our imagination, with all its fears and desires. We struggle to find the words that portray our experience. It is a struggle because, as T.S. Eliot says: “Words strain…will not stay in place… will not stand still.”
As we compose our words-in-music, we come up/back with a poem that speaks to our original condition—and may sometimes speak meaningfully to others too. Writing a poem can thus take us on the same journey as a lifetime.
Indeed, there are many psychological and spiritual benefits from writing poetry, including: releasing ourselves from ego inhibition (holding ourselves back) and aggression (criticizing or discounting our potential skills). We inhibit and act aggressively toward ourselves when we force ourselves to be impressive, or insist our poems be perfect and recognized by others as valuable. When poetry is our personal or spiritual practice, we give up attachment to all that and yet are open to what may result from our writing. We see our human abilities as they are and say yes to them. That yes is all we need to begin and all we gain in the end.
We do not need Shakespeare’s skill, only his enthusiasm, to write poetry. Great fervor makes us poets always, since poetry thrives on feeling. Professional skill in the craft of writing happens with time. Having passion or fervor means having an engaged, sensuous, and pyrotechnic curiosity about whatever we are focusing on or whatever is beckoning to us. All of that we can achieve right now. Eventually, we may even realize that whatever we appreciate in a poet we like, we can do too, maybe not as elegantly but certainly as passionately.
When we employ poetry as a tool of healing and transformation, we come to see that we are not only poets while we are writing; we are poets all the time. Our challenge is to remind ourselves to see with our poetic eye, the eye of yes to presence, rather than to any defined or confining reality. Then when we write a poem, what comes out is real, a proclamation of our authentic voice. It sounds original, full of our own unique and lively energy, and a joy to discover and release. Creativity is thus our finding in ourselves—and in the world—what Gerard Manley Hopkins called “the dearest freshness deep-down things.”
Poetry makes a great contribution to our psychological work, as we write about issues from our present or past: The poetic mode evokes a knowledge and insightfulness that was unconscious before we began writing. We notice how our story or predicament takes on a new significance, reveals a surprising insight, and shows an unexpected depth. Writing a poem as we face any personal issue can move us into new realizations and solutions too, another not-so-surprising benefit.
David Richo: adapted from: Being True to Life: Poetic Paths to Personal Growth (Shambhala)