How Poetry Can Change Your Heart

by Andrea Gibson

  Text copyright © 2019 by Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Gibson, Andrea (Poet), author. | Falley, Megan, author.

  Title: How poetry can change your heart / by Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley.

  Description: San Francisco : Chronicle Books, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018026122 | ISBN 9781452171807 (hardcover : alk. paper)

  Subjects: LCSH: Poetry-- Appreciation. | Poetry-- Influence.

  Classification: LCC PN1064 .G46 2019 | DDC 808.1-- dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018026122

  ISBN: 978-1-4521-7180-7 (hc)

  ISBN: 978-1-4521-7740-3 (epub, mobi)

  Design by Vanessa Dina

  Chronicle Books LLC

  680 Second Street

  San Francisco, California 94107

  www.chroniclebooks.com

  POETRY TRANSFORMS

  INTRODUCTION

  WHAT IS POETRY, ANYWAY?

  TWENTY-ONE QUESTIONS TO ASK ON YOUR FIRST DATE WITH POETRY

  POETRY IS GREAT COMPANY

  POETRY AS WORLD TRAVEL

  WAIT— A SAD POEM CAN MAKE ME HAPPY?

  POETRY AS A VEHICLE FOR EMPATHY

  LET’S GUSH FOR A MOMENT ABOUT THE MAGIC OF LANGUAGE

  CAN POETRY CHANGE THE WORLD?

  WHAT YOU REALLY NEED TO KNOW (OR DO YOU?)

  BUT WHAT IF I STILL DON’T GET IT?

  FINDING POETRY EVERYWHERE

  POETRY OUT LOUD

  HOW CAN I FIND POETRY THAT I LIKE?

  HOW CAN I TELL IF A POEM IS GOOD?

  THE GIFT OF AWE

  WHO CAN BE A POET? (HINT: EVERYONE)

  SO YOU WANT TO WRITE A POEM

  THE MYTH OF WRITER’S BLOCK

  TO CONCLUDE

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  Maybe the poetry you were assigned in school twisted your face into a knot of confusion. Maybe it was the literary equivalent of warm milk, lulling you to sleep. Maybe it roused your every goose bump, but then you graduated to a world that built a cubicle around your wonder, and someone replaced the poetry in your hand with a textbook on business marketing. Maybe you are longing for more beauty in your life and envision poetry as the splash of aquamarine on an otherwise beige canvas. Maybe you are already in love with poetry and want to deepen your relationship through this book.

  Whatever brought you to these pages, welcome. Welcome to the ever-adventurous journey of witnessing your own life by witnessing another’s. Welcome to expanding your peripheral vision to the width of the Pacific by entering this world through someone else’s perspective. Welcome to blush and rage and melt and bliss. Welcome to a world where there are as many languages as there are people and it turns out there is a poet out there who is fluent in you.

  Poetry makes the universe reachable by telling a story. We can travel continents in a single stanza. Feel lifetimes in a lone page. Poetry is the passport that proves we are, all of us, citizens of the world, and through poetry we can even heal that world.

  Whoever first said that poetry is dead failed to provide the autopsy. If poetry is dead, what a rowdy and glorious ghost. Poetry haunts. Poetry permeates the walls we put up. Poetry startles us awake and into our own aliveness. Poetry rustles the hairs on the backs of our necks and chases us into more compassionate rooms. Though it is difficult to change a stubborn mind, poetry can change our hearts in an instant.

  It’s probable that there are more poets on Earth today than at any other time in history. After all, there are more humans than ever, and the rising popularity of spoken word has brought more attention to the art. The likelihood that someone out there is writing the poems that you need to hear increases by the day. Poetry is alive and running through the streets, calling your name. Whoever you are. No matter what they told you. Despite anything that has ever suggested otherwise. Poetry is for you.

  WHAT IS POETRY, ANYWAY?

  “poetry (noun): writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm”

  —MERRIAM-WEBSTER.COM/DICTIONARY

  Now that we’ve gotten the dictionary’s definition of poetry out of the way, let’s get a little bit more honest. We might venture to say that poetry has closer to seven billion definitions, as it means something a little different to every person on the planet. A romantic might say that it is the pen-and-paper version of roses and chocolate. A skeptic might argue it’s whatever is inside a very disposable greeting card. A high school student might believe poetry is Shakespeare, and never learn anything more. A literary academic might define it as saying as much as you can in as few words as possible. But a person whose heart has been changed by poetry will tell you poetry is the key that unlocks a door you never knew was shut.

  Below are some definitions of poetry from a smattering of people:

  “Word music”

  —LINDA TEDESCO, 49, LEGO® BRICK ARTIST

  “What happens when you give your heart a pen.”

  —HILLARY BROWNE, 38, DOG ENTHUSIAST

  “Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toenails twinkle, makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone in the unknown world, that your bliss and suffering is forever shared and forever all your own.”

  —DYLAN THOMAS (1914–1953), WELSH POET

  “To understand the universe, I turn to science, but to understand my place in it, I turn to poetry.”

  —KARINA FOSTER-MIDDLETON, 22, ASTRONOMY STUDENT

  “The poet thinks in big ways. The people think in tiny ways.”

  —JUDE, 7

  There have been some rumors about poetry flying around, and it’s time to set the record straight.

  Myth #1: Poetry has to rhyme.

  Myth #2: Poetry has to be about love.

  Myth #3: Or flowers. Or wintry landscapes.

  Myth #4: Poetry is polite and proper.

  Myth #5: It is difficult to understand.

  Myth #6: Poetry can only be found in books.

  Myth #7: All poets are white men from the 1800s or before.

  Myth #8: It’s a dead art form.

  Myth #9: Poetry is not for you.

  Poetry can rhyme, but some poems would not be caught dead constricting themselves to the laws of sound. Poetry can be about love and the British countryside, but also about the apocalypse or serial killers or pop stars or baseball. It doesn’t have to be in iambic pentameter (what’s that again?) or Old English, or written in a way that makes you contort your brain into a question mark. Poetry can be written by anyone paying attention. It doesn’t have to be about cold plums1 or Grecian urns2 or coy mistresses.3 Maybe you think that actually not so much depends on the red wheelbarrow beside the white chickens glistening with rain.4 That’s okay. But know this: Poetry is not a dead art form. Did you know that there are poets right now who are selling out thousand-seater rock clubs and reading poems to standing, screaming fans? Poets in New Mexico who host “drive-by poetry readings” where they pull up in their cars, roll down the windows, shout a poem to pedestrians, then speed off? There are poets who have libraries in their brains full of memorized poems that they never ever wrote down. If you still believe poetry is not for you, it is merely because you have not found the poet out there who is for you. But you will.

&
nbsp; Poetry is for everybody. It is not an exclusive club for people who wear berets and are very good at snapping. If school taught you that poetry was not for you, school did you wrong! School gets an F. Poetry can be funny. It can be political. It can be erotic and full of curse words. Poetry can be a love letter to pudding.5 Or an ode to a tampon.6 Or about the Geico Gecko.7 Or about toasters that burn the image of Jesus Christ onto the bread.8 Poetry can be about any topic, in any form, written by anyone. (Spoiler alert for later chapters: Even you!)

  1. William Carlos Williams, “This is Just to Say”

  2. John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

  3. Andrew Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress”

  4. William Carlos Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow”

  5. Mike McGee, “Puddin’ (An Ode)”

  6. Sharon Olds, “Ode to the Tampon”

  7. Phil Kaye, “The Geico Gecko”

  8. Omar Holmon, “Jesus Christ Super Toaster”

  TWENTY-ONE QUESTIONS TO ASK ON YOUR FIRST DATE WITH POETRY

  Science suggests that a series of predetermined and increasingly vulnerable questions asked between strangers can lead to love. What if you could ask yourself some questions about your connection with poetry and fall in love with the art form? Here is a list of questions to help you get introspective about the state of your current relationship to poems and to see if you can envision a future together (Is it complicated? Are you married? Separated? “Just talking”? Ready to commit to a thirty-year mortgage?). Read each question, pause, and take the time to answer it honestly and thoughtfully. (This is great to do with a friend or group as well. Try it out!)

  What were you raised to appreciate?

  In what ways, if any, was poetry valued in the house where you grew up?

  In what unique, amusing, or special ways did your family interact with language?

  What is your favorite song lyric of all time?

  If you were to explain poetry to a toddler, how would you describe it?

  Look around. What are the five most beautiful things you see?

  The five most heartbreaking?

  What is a topic you could spend an easy hour talking about?

  What in the universe are you most curious about?

  What is the one-sentence version of your life story?

  What is the tiniest, yet most important, detail of your life?

  Where is the beauty in the last thing that made you cry?

  Where was the grief hiding in your last moment of bliss?

  Why is your favorite season your favorite season?

  What is your favorite word and why?

  What was the most riveting conversation you have ever had?

  Do you remember the last time someone put words to something you couldn’t easily express?

  What is your earliest fear, and what is your most recent?

  Describe the last time you were awestruck.

  If a poet were to write about one story from your life, what story would you have them tell?

  Why don’t you tell it?

  POETRY IS GREAT COMPANY

  If the old adage is true, about book lovers never going to bed alone, then, given the lightweight and portable nature of a poetry book, poetry lovers never have to do a myriad of things alone: go to the park, wait at the doctor’s office, ride an airplane. Right there in your pocket: a friend. And we know what you’re thinking—a cell phone––but many studies have illuminated that smartphone dependence leads to anxiety and mood disorders, sleep disturbances, stress level and chronic pain increases, relationship problems, and more. A poetry book can’t unfriend you or call you a trash-bucket on the internet. Science supports that reading books (as opposed to those pesky screens of junk light) has great benefits for the mind. Hallelujah!

  Of course, it goes a bit deeper than that. Because of how intensely personal confessional poetry is, it can make you feel like you’ve been given a backstage pass into someone else’s mind. It can help you feel like you have a companion in the world, someone you know intimately. Reading poetry can feel like somebody’s diary was made public, or even like somebody’s diary was handed personally over to you. And when you discover a poet whose work really resonates, it can feel like they snuck under your bed and read all of your secrets and bound them together in a book. Have you ever been somewhere beautiful without a camera or friend and wished someone were there to share it with? That’s how so many poems are born. A person catches something gorgeous and documents it, as if to say, “Hey, you. Yes, you. Look at all that gold.” Sometimes poets write poems as if they were letters to friends they don’t yet have.

  Science suggests that loneliness resonates in the same part of the brain as physical pain. Feeling lonely (more so than being alone) has been medically linked to poor health and heart disease. Actual broken hearts! If poetry makes us feel less lonely, then it also reduces our pain and increases our happiness. Poetry is deeply discounted therapy. A natural antidepressant. And it could maybe even add years to your life.

  POETRY AS WORLD TRAVEL

  Not everyone has the privilege to travel the world, or even visit the next state or county. But poetry by people from different backgrounds can turn you into a globe-trotter without the burden of being frisked by the TSA. If you read about the motherland of a poet from another country, you may feel as if you have traveled there yourself. You might read a poem about a wild party in Tel Aviv and find yourself dancing down a street you have never seen, or kissing whomever the poet kissed and decided to write about. You might grieve the loss of a person you have never met, or catch a snowflake on your tongue for the first time even though you’ve never left the simmering South.

  Do you know dogs will get depressed if they play in only one yard, even if that yard is huge? Pups need new smells and sights and sounds to truly feel alive. Though zoos are not anything to advocate for, oftentimes zookeepers will implant unique scents throughout a lion’s vast but caged terrain to mimic what a lion might experience in the jungle, because otherwise the lion will grow listless, empty, sad. Poetry is an endless sensual landscape, an exploration of uncountable worlds. It is the sound of the sea crashing against the coast in line at the DMV, or tasting the sweat of someone’s dancing skin while waiting at a frigid bus stop. George R.R. Martin wrote that “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. . . . The man who never reads lives only one.”

  Each poem is its own journey. The incredible paradox is this: The further we go, the closer we get to ourselves. The more terrains we traipse, the more we understand our own complex topography. The more we travel, the more we come home.

  Poetry is your passport. All aboard.

  WAIT–A SAD POEM CAN MAKE ME HAPPY?

  “I want to throw a party for the heartbreak that turned you into a poet.”

  —MINDY NETTIFEE

  After our formative poetic years of imbibing Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein, many poems we encounter are not necessarily happy. Life happens, and art becomes a tool for many artists to process that life. Poems can lure an ocean out of our eyeballs––as much as Leonardo DiCaprio did when he told Rose that she would die an old lady in her bed, then sank, gorgeously, to the bottom of the ocean.9 Poems can uncover our own dusty griefs. They can enrage us into action, or encourage us to shout our aching into megaphones at protests and rallies. But that doesn’t mean the same poems can’t also make you happy.

  Wait––what?

  What if sad poems are actually the happiest poems because of the catharsis they provide? What if sad poems grant the reader full permission to feel their loss? What if their pages hold a safe space to process emotions, to feel the feelings and release them? What if poetry is a kind of bloodletting?

  9. Titanic, the movie.

  We live in a culture that oppresses feelings (or, rather, depresses and buries them in work, to-do lists, social media, intoxicants of our choice, etc.), which can actually lead to depression. Ayurvedic medicine suggests the root of disease is often undigested emotion
. Therefore, to feel is to heal.

  In societies where we cannot publicly emote, many of us weep in the darks of theaters to tragic movies and plays. Lonely and heartbroken songs can be our best companions during breakups. Art created from a place of pain often illuminates to us the breadth of the human experience, the spectrum of possibility in our unique psyches––from shame to peace, desolation to elation, despair to utter joy. This reminder of the multitudinous aspect of our lives can turn even the hardest feelings into a celebration of the human experience.

  Even when the truth isn’t hopeful, the telling of it is.

  The Guest House

  This being human is a guest house.

  Every morning a new arrival.

  A joy, a depression, a meanness,

  some momentary awareness comes

  as an unexpected visitor.

  Welcome and entertain them all!

  Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,

  who violently sweep your house

  empty of its furniture,

  still, treat each guest honorably.

  He may be clearing you out

  for some new delight.

  The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

  meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

  Be grateful for whatever comes.

  because each has been sent

  as a guide from beyond.

  —RUMI

  POETRY AS A VEHICLE FOR EMPATHY

  It’s one thing to see ourselves represented in art and feel more validated because of it. It’s another thing to read about lives very different from our own. Witnessing others’ stories can expand our own capacity for empathy and compassion.