Healing Poetry

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting

over and over announcing

your place in the family of things.

——from The Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

There are a large number of poems that could be offered as potentially healing. I’m offering here a handful that I’ve come across, and written about briefly, because they seem to me to resonate especially well with the process of healing, and because any one of them seems like it could be a springboard—a trampoline?—to one’s own writing.

Here is lovely encouragement from Naomi Shihab Nye for writing a little as one collects poems.

AND here’s the new 2023 ebook version that weaves poems and writing prompts with research on writing and health.

I. Poems that conjure a healing place

Last Night As I Lay Sleeping by Antonio Machado

The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry

The Lake Isle of Innisfree by WB Yeats

Island of the Raped Women by Frances Driscoll

Keeping Quiet by Pablo Neruda

What I Want by Alicia Ostriker

II. Poems about a quest

The Journey by Mary Oliver

Instructions by Neil Gaiman

Diving into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich

III. Poems that might offer company during a difficult time

The Guest House by Rumi

Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye

Gate A-4 by Naomi Shihab Nye

Satellite Call by Sara Bareilles

One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

The Armful by Robert Frost

The Spell by Marie Howe

Talking to Grief by Denise Levertov

Sweetness by Stephen Dunn

My Dead Friends by Marie Howe

III. Poems for looking at the world in new ways

The Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

Because Even the Word Obstacle Is an Obstacle by Alison Luterman

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens

Eighteen Ways of Looking at Cancer by a group of women in a writing workshop

If by Rudyard Kipling and Joni Mitchell

Desert Places by Robert Frost

Report from a Far Place by William Stafford

The Snowman by Wallace Stevens

Notes in Bathrobe Pockets by Raymond Carver

A New Path to the Waterfall, a collection by Raymond Carver and Tess Gallagher

The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

IV. A poem about the process of reading

Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins

V. A poem for considering purpose

Every Craftsman by Rumi.

Poems recently posted are included below.

Over the Wall of Self: A Found Poem by David Foster Wallace

Posted by Diane Morrow on August 16, 2015 in Blog, Fiction, Healing Poetry

After writing about This is Water by David Foster Wallace a couple weeks ago, I ended up listening to the beginning of a documentary, Endnotes, done by BBC. The opening, in Wallace’s own words, struck me as a kind of poem which I’m including here. These are words that could serve as inspiration for anyone who writes and reads— There’s something magical for me about literature and fiction and I think it can do things not only that pop culture can’t do, but that are urgent now. One is that by creating a character in a piece of fiction you can allow a reader to leap over the wall of self and to imagine himself being not just somewhere else but someone else. In a way that television and movies that no other form can do because people I think are essentially lonely and alone and frightened of being alone. I love his sense of urgency here. And his honesty—his vulnerability. And this image of leaping over the wall of self. A reason to read–and to write. His comments also dovetail well with research that has demonstrated a link between reading literary fiction and developing empathy and emotional intelligence. The BBC documentary, Endnotes is linked at YouTube...

Because Even the Word Obstacle is an Obstacle by Alison Luterman

Posted by Diane Morrow on April 19, 2015 in Blog, Healing Poetry, Perspective

I appreciate this poem for its first line: Try to love everything that gets in your way. I love that the poem is about swimming laps. Learn to be small and swim through obstacles like a minnow without grudges or memory. I think I recognize the moment this poem might spring from–getting to the pool and wanting nothing more than an empty lane, the smooth glassy surface of the water, and, then, well–obstacles. The poem is so specific about what can get in the way. For instance: the Chinese women in flowered bathing caps murmuring together in Mandarin, doing leg exercises in your lane the teenage girl idly lounging against the ladder, showing off her new tattoo: Cette vie est la mienne, This life is mine, in thick blue-black letters on her ivory instep. an uncle in the lane next to yours who is teaching his nephew how to hold his breath underwater, even though kids aren’t allowed at this hour. The poem continues. It imagines the boy grown up and on a wedding on a boat and suddenly washed overboard—but emerging like a cork from the water—alive. I appreciate the poem’s last line: So your moment of impatience must bow in service to a larger story, because if something is in your way it is going your way, the way of all beings; towards darkness, towards light. So your moment of impatience must bow in service to a larger story. As a person who struggles mightily with impatience, I appreciate the possibility of recasting my moments of impatience in a different way. Considering a larger story. Considering, in light of the poem’s title, how if I could get a glimpse of this larger story then the very words I use to interpret and name things might begin to change. An obstacle might become . . . what? Full text of the poem is at Your Daily Poem. The poem originally appeared in Sun Magazine in 2010. See also: Is Shifting One’s Point of View a Healing Habit? Photo of swimming minnow is captured from video at...

Emotional Baggage Check: Song as Medicine

Posted by Diane Morrow on January 25, 2015 in Blog, Healing Corridor, Healing Poetry, Writing and Healing Prompts

A young woman in my sophomore class shared this website with me–and then with the whole class. She told us how the website had helped her during a difficult time–how she was able to check in some difficult baggage and receive some genuine help–and now she tries to go onto the site on the weekends and carry baggage for someone else–pay it forward. First, it’s a visually attractive site–simple and elegant–with few choices. You can “check it”–that is check in a piece of your own emotional baggage by writing briefly about it–or you can “carry it”–carry someone else’s baggage for a moment. The way to carry someone’s baggage is simply to read what they’ve posted–the problem they’re dealing with–and then send them a link to a song that you think might help them with whatever they’re dealing with. Song as antidote. Song as medicine. Not unlike a poem as medicine. This not a cure-all, of course. But a beautifully simple idea. You can also send along a few encouraging words with the song link if you like. Choosing either path could lead to an opportunity for writing and healing: condensing one’s most pressing problem into a brief description (no more than 1000 characters) or responding to someone else’s baggage–choosing the song–and composing a response (again no more than 1000 characters). What might your emotional baggage look like in 1000 characters or less? What response would you long to hear? What response to someone else’s baggage could itself become a kind of medicine? For me, hearing that this thoughtful young woman in my class had found the website useful–and was now moved to give back–gave the site some credibility. So this morning I decided to try it out. I clicked on “Carry it,” and read a brief and moving story by a young woman in England. There’s a surprising and appealing intimacy about the site. An opportunity for positive, if fleeting, connection–sending a bit of medicine out into the world. The story the young woman checked in is confidential. But here’s the song I sent: “When it Don’t Come Easy.” Emotional Baggage Check is here. A brief article from 2011 about the original history of the site, which was founded by Robyn Overstreet, can be found at Wired. Lyrics to Patty Griffin’s “When It Don’t Come Easy” can be found...

What I Want by Alicia Ostriker

Posted by Diane Morrow on January 11, 2015 in Blog, Healing Places, Healing Poetry

This is a poem about slowing down and it seems like it might be just right for January, for the quiet space that can open up after the flurry of December. And about what can happen in that quiet. It follows nicely on Pablo Neruda’s poem, “Keeping Quiet,” and seems to spring from that same place. It begins: Yes, that’s what I want right now, Just that sensation Of my mind’s gradual Deceleration, as if I Took my foot off the gas And the Buick rolled to a stop. I can feel that—the quiet after the engine ceases its noise. And I love in this poem what she later suggests can emerge out of the quiet: Let’s try to listen to the announcements Of the inner mind And its committee of guides. They require silence, They demand respect, like teachers In a rowdy classroom—the kids Are in the cloakroom throwing galoshes But the teacher wants to introduce A visitor, a foreign child who waits With downcast eyes, lashes like brown feathers On his flushed silk cheeks. What does my inner mind have on its mind? Ah, the inner mind could emerge—but it might be shy at first—and it might need to wait for the kids to quit throwing their galoshes—for them to look up and realize this visitor might have something interesting—and even important—to say. The full poem can be found at Poetry Foundation. (It spreads over two pages so you need to navigate to the second page to see the full poem.) In a note at the end of the poem, it states that it was written at the beginning of a week-long retreat. The photo of a gray cheeked thrush can be found at Audubon. The bird is described on the site this way: “All the brown-backed thrushes can be shy and hard to see, but the Gray-cheek is perhaps the most elusive. During migration it hides in dense woods, slipping away when a birder approaches. On its far northern nesting grounds it may be more easily seen, especially in late evening, when it sings from...

Keeping Quiet by Pablo Neruda

Posted by Diane Morrow on November 16, 2014 in Blog, Healing Places, Healing Poetry

I am sharing this poem, “Keeping Quiet,” with my sophomores this week as a writing catalyst. I like the way it has the potential to open up a pool of quiet in the middle of things. It begins: Now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still. Not instructions for counting to ten—that common advice for dealing with rising anger before reacting. No, this is longer—just a bit longer—stretching the silence out two beats longer. Now we will count to twelve. The opening reminds of something a teacher might say—a pre-school teacher? Or perhaps something a parent might say to a child before some kind of game. I think that’s what makes the line evocative—as if it holds the echo of something we’ve heard before. Now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still. The poem continues: For once on the face of the earth, let’s not speak in any language; let’s stop for one second, and not move our arms so much. No language. No large gestures. What then? Fisherman in the cold sea would not harm whales and the man gathering salt would look at his hurt hands. A pause for not-harming? A pause for looking at our own hands and seeing why they might hurt? A pause to simply look at what we’re doing and ask why we’re doing it? And to ask whether in fact it makes sense? What I want should not be confused with total inactivity. We would not be doing nothing We would be doing something. It’s a bit like meditation what he’s suggesting. Or perhaps writing. Not doing nothing. Doing something. Doing something different. And then, he tells us, this might become possible: perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves Who would not want this? The poem ends: Now I’ll count up to twelve and you keep quiet and I will go. Do you feel it? A sense of a vast space opening up. The poet has left—and we are here—in the quiet. The full text of the poem is here. It is read by Sylvia Boorstein. The poem is from Extravagaria and is translated by Alistair Reed (The photo is from a video of the poem which has since been taken...

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