How Poetry Can Change Your Heart

by Andrea Gibson

  Also—just because it’s famous and everyone knows/loves it doesn’t mean it’s for you. It doesn’t say anything about who you are if you have read a certain poem a few times and it doesn’t resonate with you. Just like it doesn’t say much about you if you prefer Granny Smiths over Pink Lady apples. It is your taste. Knowing what you like (and what you don’t!) is a crucial part of the journey to knowing who you are and what makes you tick. It’s actually an expansive process, getting to know why you don’t like something. Knowing ourselves deeply is a constant spring of goodness. So feel confident in saying, “That poem is not for me.” Knowing what you don’t like will better prepare you for that glorious moment when you read something and can say, “It’s as if that writer crawled in through my ear, squatted in my brain, and wrote the story of what is inside it. It is as if no one has ever known me that much, since or before.”

  OTHER FUN WAYS TO TRY TO UNDERSTAND A POEM

  Read the poem out loud. You might hear something entirely new when you test it out in your ears.

  Invite others around you to engage with the piece. Ask, “What does this poem mean to you?” Don’t be afraid to discuss, to have an opinion, to be wrong, to be right, to be unsure but blooming open.

  Ask yourselves the following:

  What are your favorite words in the poem?

  What is your favorite image?

  What pairing of words or images made you feel something?

  Does this poem invite any memories back into your mind? Which ones?

  If this poem were a color, what color would it be?

  If you were to read it to music, what kind of music would you read it to?

  Are there any lines you had to say out loud, to try them in your own mouth?

  Does this poem have a texture—velvet? Sand?

  If you were to share this poem with one person, who would it be?

  Sometimes turning the poem inside out in this way will help you get to know it a bit deeper.

  FINDING POETRY EVERYWHERE

  Finding poetry outside of a book of poetry is one of the most delightful experiences. The sensation of discovering the poetic, the beautiful, the meaningful, the miraculous within an uncommon moment or place connects us to the essence of beauty on this planet. Has someone ever said something to you that made you respond, “Wow, you should be a poet”?

  Some unexpected places you can find poetry are:

  SONG LYRICS

  Did you know that song lyrics are poetry set to music? Do you remember the first time song lyrics melted you? Have you ever appreciated a musician, less for their voice or instrumentation, and more for their words? If so, congratulations. You have absolutely been moved by poetry.

  Have you ever misheard a song lyric, and then, upon finding the real lyric, thought that what you misheard was, in its own special way, just as gorgeous? The songwriter Chris Pureka has a line, “Looking for a rope to keep me still,” that has been misheard as “Looking for a road to keep me still.” The latter suggests a whole new sorcery: the way travel, or even running away, despite its hectic movement, can also ground us and bring us peace. The way leaving sometimes feels like arriving into who we are and who we want to be.

  MISTAKES

  Beyond misheard song lyrics, there is an abundance of mistakes available for us to make poetry from what someone else might have considered “wrong.” There is the person who said “free-style swimming” was her favorite sport because she loved that the swimmers had the freedom to swim however they’d like to. So tender! The poet Denise Jolly had a typo in a chapbook of hers, where the line “I want to marry you” accidentally read “I want to merry you.” But isn’t that the most perfect imperfection? The idea then becomes that you want more than to wed someone; you want to make them merry, fill their lives with bliss.

  FACTS

  There’s poetry in facts. Have you ever googled facts? Like the fact that a caterpillar turns entirely liquid in its chrysalis before becoming a butterfly? Poetry! Or that everybody in the world was at one point the youngest person on Earth? Poetry!

  Humans shed forty pounds of skin in their lifetime. Poetry! A dragonfly has an average lifespan of twenty-four hours. A shrimp’s heart is in its head. Many of the stars we see in the sky have actually been dead for years. Poetry! Poetry! Poetry! Spend some time on the internet researching “interesting facts about _____________” (animals, space, humans, planet earth, bodies, religion, etc.). Let something move you.

  WHAT OTHER PEOPLE SAY

  The poet Lauren Zuniga created a found poem (a poem that borrows text from sources other than the author and reframes it as poetry) that is entirely comprised of things her seven-year-old son said to her. The ability to find the poetic in the words of others (ages three to 103!) alerts us to the beauty all around us.

  “What does September mean? I am seven in September. When are we all going to get married again? I dance good at the marriage. I look cool when I dance. If I was as big as a dragon I could really do the caterpillar. It would mess up the ground though.”

  –– “SMALL ENOUGH TO FIT,” LAUREN ZUNIGA

  HIDING IN THE LAST PLACE YOU LOOK

  You might realize that your love life can be summed up by the I section of your digital music library, arranged in alphabetical order, and that that is a poem:

  I Fall Apart.

  I Feel Fine.

  I Feel It All.

  I Feel Like Dying

  In Case We Die

  In Da Club

  In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

  In This Hole on Ice

  Incomplete and Insecure ––

  Is This Love?

  It Could Be Sweet. It’s All Been Done.

  It’s All Gonna Break.

  It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.

  OTHER THINGS YOU READ

  It makes sense that someone who is writing anything may have a knack for poetic language. Maybe there’s a music writer or even a sportswriter whose words just sing. Gala Mukomolova writes horoscopes for Nylon magazine, and her predictions for Aries read like a dream:

  “Are you walking around in a fog but also the one carrying the fog machine? Separate your performance ego from your sense of self. Meditate on the people and situations you claim strip you of your power, that suffocate you or tamp down the fire that makes you you. Every relationship, project, and place in your life is in your life because you have made a space for them. They are here to teach you who you are and who you are not by association. Zero in on your own image amidst that fog. What do you believe about yourself, and what illusions do you will yourself and others to believe? Why smolder for years trying to spark wet wood when there’s a spirit in you ready to burn a house down? Don’t tell me you’re not ready to bet on yourself or that betting on yourself is a long game. You were born for high stakes, you’re a sure thing.”

  IN BETWEEN THE LINES

  An erasure poem is made by taking an existing text and cutting out or blacking out words to find your own poem in the source material. There are infinite options and outcomes when you are creating an erasure poem. It can be an act of reclaiming a text to make it belong to you. Let’s turn the introduction of this book into its own erasure (love) poem:

  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 i n 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.

  POETRY OUT LOUD

  Before there were writing systems to preserve information and folklore, people memorized prose and poems and passed them down through generations. This is known as “the oral tradition.” Poetry recitations have been used to recount the histories and stories of people all over the world for thousands of years.

  Today poems live out loud in many different forms, from Beyoncé’s Lemonade to commencement speeches. But one of the most exciting and energetic of those forms is the act of performance poetry, or spoken word. It’s been made increasingly accessible with the popularity of poetry slam––a poetry competition that inspires poets to perform their poems with as much passion and authenticity as can be mustered. Spoken word has breathed new life into the ways we take in poetry.

  Listening to a poet read their own work aloud can be a wildly moving experience, even for those who do not identify as poetry lovers. It is common for people to Listening to a poet read their own work aloud can be a wildly moving experience, even for those who do not identify as poetry lovers. It is common for people to accidentally wander into a poetry slam and find themselves hooked on the art form for life. If you yourself have the opportunity to hear a poet read their work out loud (more on how to do that later), give yourself permission to feel a lot. Settle into the myriad emotions that are likely to carbonate in your being. Notice what hits you the hardest. Notice what doesn’t reach you at all. Notice your reaction to the WAY the poem is being read. What races your heart? What shuts you down? How does the poet’s particular style of reading affect what you’re able to take in? Ask yourself how you might react to the poem differently if it lived solely on the page.

  Many poets write the way many songwriters do, with intent and diligent focus on sound. A songwriter would never want to write a song to only live on a page. Many poets feel the same, knowing that how a line rings in the listeners’ ears can affect their response to it as much as the words themselves. What if you approached a poetry open mic the same way you would a concert?

  HOW CAN I FIND POETRY THAT I LIKE?

  EXPERIENCE POETRY FROM YOUR OWN HOME

  Perhaps you’ve not read a poem since high school and have no clue where to start. Or maybe you’ve read only a handful of cherished authors, but are curious about what’s out there in the great poetic beyond. Perhaps you possess the planet’s largest poetry book collection but you’re still searching for new authors lurking in its pages. Wherever you are in your journey, welcome!

  Anthologies are a great place to start, as they highlight the work of many different authors. Pick up an anthology of poems from your local library or bookstore. Pour yourself a cup of coffee or a glass of wine or a banana milkshake, and sit down with an anthology as if it were a new friend you are psyched to get to know. You can start at the beginning of the book, or flip to any lucky page. Read it to yourself, or test it out loud. Talk to it. Let it talk to you.

  Online literary journals work similarly, especially when you’re looking for a way to be enchanted by poetry for free. Explore the writing of a breadth of wordsmiths. If just one or two resonate with you––great! It probably won’t be difficult to find more of their work, and chances are, if they’ve written one thing you love, they’ve written a whole lot more!

  Some inspiring online poetry journals are: Muzzle magazine, PANK, Rattle, Ploughshares, Poetry magazine, BOAAT journal, and The Offing. And a quick Google search will unlock a grand internet library. Many of these journals also provide printed editions, if you’re looking to disconnect from the World Wide Web and get your poetry fix on the Q train, or on the beaches of Brazil.

  Hint: Think of reading poetry from journals (both in print and online) as similar to trying on jeans in a department store. Sometimes you have to try on piles of jeans before you find the pair that fits. You may need the same patience with poetry. The reward, though? Even greater: a brand-new wardrobe for your spirit.

  YouTube has become a great resource for listening to poets read their work aloud without having to leave your home. Button Poetry and SlamFind are two YouTube channels that will give you front-row seats to the world of spoken word and performance poetry. Both feature a diverse cast of poets from around the world, performing their poems with passion and grit. Once you start watching, it may be difficult to stop. Move over, Netflix, poetry is coming to town!

  LEAVE YOUR HOUSE FOR POETRY

  “I ransack public libraries, and find them full of sunk treasure.”

  —VIRGINIA WOOLF

  Public libraries are sexy! So are bookstores! Spend some time there perusing the poetry section. You can go alone or with a friend or even on a date. Try pulling a book off the shelf, any book, and landing your finger on a random page. It’s similar to a tarot reading: Imagine the poem you land on is a message just for you. Even if you don’t initially connect to the piece, do a little deeper digging to figure out the hows and whys of that poem finding you.

  Take yourself to a live poetry experience. Research open mics and other poetry events in your area. These can take place in libraries, bookstores, cafés, theaters, cemeteries, bars, universities, and even barber shops! There are so many readings throughout the world, and visiting those spaces while traveling is a great way to get a sense of the local pulse. Many of these events are low-cost or free. Don’t be afraid to say hello to a poet if you were moved by their work. Consider striking up conversation with other audience members and exploring the differences and similarities of how the night’s art impacted you.

  EXPERIENCE POETRY IN COMMUNITY

  It might be daunting to start this journey into poetry on your own, so why not invite some friends? If you’re part of a book club, consider adding a poetry collection to the mix. Although a collection of poetry is indubitably shorter than a novel, there’s often just as much in it to discuss—if not more!

  WHAT THE HECK IS A POETRY SLAM?

  A poetry slam is a poetry competition. It was invented in the 1980s by a construction worker who dreamed of making poetry events more dynamic and riveting. At a poetry slam, five volunteers from the audience are given scorecards and asked to rate the poems on a scale from 0 to 10—a 10 being Prince descending from heaven to give you your own private concert, and a 0 being running late to your own wedding when a bird defecates on your head, and when you finally arrive at the altar, the bride changes her mind. Anyone can be a judge, as long as they don’t know any of the performers. Wildly, a judge could be someone who has never heard a poem in their life. The poets compete to move the audience, and the total democracy of judging has catapulted slam into an art form for the people.

  There’s a good chance a poetry slam takes place weekly or monthly close to you. They happen in cities all o
ver the world, and in many countries there are national competitions, which are arguably some of the most exciting ways to get involved in poetry—because you can judge it. You decide who moves on. You are the arbiter of good art. You are witnessing poets bring forth their best possible work, competing to impact you, to make you feel something, to change your heart.

  Sometimes poets write about the container of the art form itself. Here is a poem about poetry slam, written by poet Connor Marvin—meta!

  This Is Slam and We Do

  BY CONNOR MARVIN

  So here’s a fun fact: Everyone

  who has made great contributions

  to the arts and humanities was depressed! Or

  cursed,

  or,

  blessed . . .

  with a sensitivity. An insane willingness

  to feel the blood on the leaves.

  Forced to walk through darkness

  they learned to navigate that underworld.

  Left fire-proof maps of eternity. So tell me

  I can walk through the suffocation. Teach me