My purpose of this is to help you experience for yourself the potential of poetry to heal by experiencing the power of poetry through your own voice.
Many people are scared of poetry. They have had bad experiences with it in school. People often believe that poetry is difficult or inaccessible or not relevant to them.
Modern poetry is based on voice, and must be passed through our ears. This is where the sense is made. So, when you read this article and you see poetry
Read it aloud
pass it through your ears
enjoy the
ride, and
know
the difference between poetry and prose
is that poetry is broken
into lines
that is all.
When we speak, we use pauses and phrasing. When we speak, we breathe. When we write poetry, we have punctuation and line breaks. The line breaks are there to help the reader find the natural flow of poetry based on voice.
As you read poetry aloud
do it so that you are breathing
comfortably.
Let the sense of the poetry emerge
from your response to the rhythms
and tonal variations of the sound
as well as the meaning of the words.
When you read a passage, pause after each line and take a breath in. Feel for yourself the emergent meaning.
All of language is spoken on the out breath
All of life begins on the in
All of death is spoken on the out breath
All of life begins on the in
Poetry as a Natural Healing Practice
Many people have an intuitive sense that voice in general and poetry in particular can be healing. We have all had the experience of the comfort of soothing words. Finding the words to articulate a traumatic experience can bring relief. A letter between friends who are fighting can heal a relational wound. Poetry can spring from us naturally in times of need. People are frequently moved to write a poem in times of extremity.