Summer has arrived and, with it, a desire to sprawl, preferably under a tree or by water. For those of us lucky enough to live with the seasons, now is the time to surrender – to fruit and flowers and temperatures high enough to prevent us from doing anything rigorous without breaking into a sweat. It is time to be still, in other words, which is not a forte of most Americans. Our lifestyles are built around the hustle and bustle of multitasking – of navigating two or three screens at once, of talking while texting, of filming concerts on our iPhones rather than dancing at them, of layering appointment upon appointment while narrating our every activity on social media. It is what it is, for Americans have always been go-getters, but it is no surprise that the call for “centering activities” has been on the rise. Witness the popularity of yoga, of Buddhism, of tai chi – not to mention of blood pressure medication, muscle relaxants, and tranquilizers. But while I respect each of these practices, I’m intrigued that we look to other cultures (and prescription pads) when it comes to quieting ourselves. For as long as there have been words – before there were novels, let alone status updates and tweets – there has been poetry, and poetry is all about staying in the present.
Aside from Mother Nature herself, nothing demands surrender as poetry does. A poem captures an instance – an emotion, an image, a touch. To understand everything that lives inside a poem, we must slow down enough to live inside it well. There are no expository sentences, no predictable passages over which we may glide. Every word matters; each line requires our full attention. To read poetry is to dive deeply. It is not to skim. It is, quite simply, to fully occupy the moment. It is a powerful form of meditation.
Many sensitive souls who in an another era might have been a young poet (one to whom Rilke may have dedicated a certain small book) now post mournful YouTube rants, dress goth, or play the newest strain of emo music or death metal. The very aspect of poetry that makes it so valuable – that it requires you to unplug rather than plug in – is also what renders it old-fashioned, if not downright passé. Yet poetry in all its low-tech, lo-fi glory can make us feel more understood, more seen, and more connected to ourselves and to humanity at large than any other art form
A friend of mine, a woman always ready with a wisecrack and a list of parties to attend, surprised me the other day by confessing that she relied on poetry to help “regain her compass.” “If I’m feeling lost, off, displaced, or disassociated moon, it puts me back in myself,” she said, producing a dog-eared copy of A Book of Women Poets from Antiquity to Now that she’d kept since high school. I was so struck that I began asking others if they also were secret poetry readers. A significant number said yes, and those who did came from all walks of life. One person said she read poetry to “cool her brain.” Another told me he needed to remain “grounded yet open.” Someone else told me he read poetry when he could not sleep: “Classics like Ovid and Keats and Shelley and Yeats and Stevens and Bishop connects my moment to all these other moments in time.”
It was a lovely thought echoed by a friend who said she read all of Yeats out loud to “follow his path,” and an Adrienne Rich lover who said, “Poetry is like mainlining someone else’s id, a way of reaching across the chasms of time and culture and finding passion previously unknown.” A dear pal told me poetry taught her to treasure the details. “Mary Oliver is my girl for that,” she said. And over and over, people told me they read poetry to get through hard times. It made sense, for more than even the most talented psychotherapist or dear friend, poetry meets us where we are without expecting us to move on before we are ready. In fact, it holds us in its arms by naming the feelings we can’t quite articulate ourselves. Hence the popularity of W. H. Auden (or, as film critic A.O. Scott calls him: Auden Auden Auden), who distills grief so elegantly that you almost treasure being in its grip. I
I also adore poetry for putting wind on my back – for propelling me with a yearning and even an indignation. I’ve relied on modern poets like the politically charged Marge Piercy for that in particular. Her poem “To Be of Use” has provided my lifelong motto: “The pitcher cries for water to carry/and a person for work that is real.”
There’s a reason we still use poetry at the most important rites of passages in our lives – at our weddings, our graduations, and our funerals. Only poetry can verbally capture the true magnitude of a moment; it provides a frame like no other. “God is in the details,” indeed. The more specific something is, the more universal it can be. The more concentrated something is, the more it can represent. And the sparser something is, the more it can contain. We need poetry more than ever to help us inhabit our lives.
Whatever the emotional or even spiritual need, poetry can be a true ally (and weapon) if used correctly. The next time you’re antsy, spinning out of control, or simply ungrounded, take a deep breath and open a volume of poetry. Set a timer for fifteen minutes, turn off your electronics, and, wherever you are, sit with the same poem until something in it enters your blood stream, slows your heartbeat and, maybe, just maybe, stills your mind.
This was originally published at Signature.