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.

Talking to Grief by Denise Levertov

Posted by Diane Morrow on June 18, 2012 in Blog, Healing Poetry

The title for the chapter, “Making a Place for Grief,” was inspired by and begins with an excerpt from “Talking to Grief” by Denise Levertov: You long for your real place to be readied before winter comes. You need your name, your collar and tag. You need the right to warn off intruders, to consider my house your own and me your person and yourself my own dog. I think there’s a kind of brilliance in this poem, that resonates with so much that I understand about imagery and the way it can help us move through the more difficult passages of our lives. This notion here of imagining grief as a dog. And then taking that next step–speaking to him or her directly. Offering to make her a real place. A home. The chapter begins with her poem and ends then with what seems to me a kind of mirror image: this excerpt from Rumi’s poem, The Guest House, that has become, I suppose, a kind of theme song here: 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’re 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. This is a kind of goal I’m setting for myself this summer–to become, as much as I’m able, a guest house in this way. To welcome what arrives. I remember the poem sometimes when I’m sweeping my steps and patio in the morning. I remember the way a thought or an emotion–or a wave of emotion–or a person–a snatch of conversation–the line of a poem–or a song–any one of these could come and sweep us clean–prepare us for the next thing. May your summer be a guest house in the best possible way–or perhaps a broom–preparing you for the next thing. ____________________________________________________ Graphic is from Visual...

When I Am Asked by Lisel Mueller

Posted by Diane Morrow on June 11, 2012 in Blog, Healing Grief, Healing Poetry

I’m not at all sure that June is the right time for grief. But I’m in the process of revising my book, and that’s what I’ve been working on these last couple weeks. It’s interesting. I’ve tended, for a variety of reasons, to look at grief more in November—that’s when I tend to hear and feel most the voices of grief—and to feel a resonance between those voices and the waning light. Now, in a sense, I feel as if I’ve been looking at grief out of season. We’ve also had an especially mild summer so far, with cool, fresh mornings, the windows open, the kind of air that makes me want to be out of doors, walking, and out working in the yard and garden. I’ve been finding a rhythm of writing and then working outside. I’ve cleared and swept the patio and some of the flower beds. I’ve transplanted purple salvia—and dug up an enormous fern for a pot on the patio. I’ve gotten water back into the birdbath and the birds have been coming for drinks. A hummingbird has found the purple salvia. The voices of grief in a new place—a greener, flowering place—with a hummingbird. There’s a poem by Lisel Mueller that speaks to this contrast—the contrast of grief and summer. It begins this way: When I am asked how I began writing poems, I talk about the indifference of nature. It was soon after my mother died, a brilliant June day, everything blooming. I sat on a gray stone bench in a lovingly planted garden, but the day lilies were as deaf as the ears of drunken sleepers and the roses curved inward. Nothing was black or broken and not a leaf fell and the sun blared endless commercials for summer holidays. I can see this—I can see how summer could seem indifferent to difficult feelings and difficult experiences. In her case this itself becomes a catalyst for writing. The poem continues: I sat on a gray stone bench ringed with the ingenue faces of pink and white impatiens and placed my grief in the mouth of language, the only thing that would grieve with me. Placing grief in the mouth of language. This seems important—and wonderful. I can also see how these kind of days—these cool, fresh mornings—could have the potential to offer a kind of balm for grief—as if one were allowing the voice of grief to emerge for a time in a new location—a kind of healing place. With the possibility of finding language there too—in the cool, wet green of summer mornings. ___________________________________ Photo from my patio...

The Buddha’s Last Instruction by Mary Oliver

Posted by Diane Morrow on May 15, 2012 in Blog, Healing Poetry, Month 13

During a bittersweet week of graduations, watching a whole flock of students move on, my heart full with their moving, I keep coming back to this poem. Now, only this morning, does it occur to me that the poem describes a kind of graduation speech–a person, in this case Siddhartha Gautama, trying to condense what he learned into a few words. The poem begins this way: “Make of yourself a light,” said the Buddha, before he died. 5 words. Make of yourself a light. The speaker of Mary Oliver’s poem connects this instruction to the rising of the sun itself. I think of this every morning as the east begins to tear off its many clouds of darkness, to send up the first signal—a white fan streaked with pink and violet, even green. I find myself, this morning, the sun already risen, connecting the Buddha’s instructions to tangible light outside my windows, light glowing in the green leaves, and, beyond these trees, I feel the instructions connected to what I see in my mind–a gaggle of students in graduation robes–the light I have seen shine from and among them these last three years that I’ve been with them. The confidence I feel that they will carry this light forward. The sense I have–something a little more than hope–that this extension and expansion of light does not diminish me–their leaving–but somehow extends and expands all of us. A sense I used to have years back when patients graduated from seeing me. A sense I’ve felt at different moments as my own children grow up and away. He might have said anything, Mary Oliver writes. What he said were those 5 words: Make of yourself a light. The speaker of the poem watches and feels the sun blaze over the hills and it’s as if she feels the words themselves in that light I feel myself turning into something of inexplicable value. As if following this instruction could matter? As if following it could make a difference? He could have said anything. he raised his head. He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd. The poem ends on that last line, the pause before the last instructions. And I love that Oliver considers that the crowd was frightened. Transitions always seem to hold that kernel of fear–change is occurring. Nothing’s going to be exactly the way it was before. In this case, a person they loved and looked toward was leaving. What would he tell them? What could he tell them? They must have held their breaths, waiting. And then, after he finally spoke, the words must have echoed inside their heads–and hearts–for the rest of their lives. Oliver, I suspect, intends the words to echo for us as well, at least for a time. She’s constructed her poem, it seems, with that intent. She doesn’t repeat the instructions at the end of the poem. It’s the dropped beat that we inevitably must fill. He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd. A pause. And then he spoke. _______________________________________ See also: A piece on November Angels by Jane Hirshfield...

I must go, I will go: Poetry as Respite and Transformation

Posted by Diane Morrow on April 23, 2012 in Blog, Healing Places, Healing Poetry

In the introduction to his poetry anthology, Through Corridors of Light, which I wrote about a few weeks back, John Andrew Denny writes about how poetry came to offer a respite from the cabin fever imposed by illness. He’d been suffering with ME and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (what is sometimes called CFIDS) when a poem, arriving on a postcard from a friend, catalyzed a shift in his experience. The poem was John Masefield’s “Sea Fever.” His wife had the genius to blow the poem up to poster size and put it up on his bedroom wall. He writes: Until then I had spent most of my days lying on my back, gazing at the ceiling and half-listening to the radio. Now I was just as likely to be lying on my side, focusing my mind on a few lines of the poem. I was mesmerized by the music and the rhythm of its language, and I took comfort in saying its lines over and over like a mantra, which would run through my head at odd times of the day and night. To my delight I found that repeated reading set my imagination alight and briefly transported me out of my prison of boredom and frustration. Saying its lines over and over like a mantra. Every few weeks he changed the poem. . . . when I followed WB Yeats’s imaginary escape from the grey London streets to his ‘Lake Isle of Innisfree’, I felt the exhilaration of freedom from my own narrow London flat, which in reality I could rarely leave. He writes: I found after several months that my feelings of being trapped began to dissolve. Something is happening here. In the first chapter of One Year of Writing and Healing, I write about the importance of discovering and creating and writing about healing places. The way these can become a kind of foundation for healing. But sometimes when one is ill it’s simply asking too much to write. Even reading a book can be too much. But a poem on a poster? Perhaps that could be just the thing. Or perhaps a single line to begin with. Or two lines? I love how, in Denny’s case, the lines of poetry – the music and rhythm of the language – gradually found their way into his mind, transforming thoughts of being trapped, slowly, slowly, into thoughts of finding respite. Something else interesting. Both poems (two of the three he mentions in this section of his introduction) begin in similar and compelling ways. The first, John Masefield’s Sea Fever begins: I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky The Lake Isle of Innisfree has an opening that echoes this: I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree I must go. I will go. Something here I think about what poetry can do–and about what is possible in and with the mind. ________________________________________________ See also: Through Corridors of Light at Amazon Another piece on Through Corridors of Light Sea Fever by John Masefield read aloud on YouTube The Lake Isle of Innisfree by WB Yeats The photo above is of Innisfree, taken by Ben Bulben at Flicker. I like the way you can see the lake water...

Writing and Healing Prompt: Opening the Door of Mercy

Posted by Diane Morrow on April 9, 2012 in Blog, Healing Poetry, Writing and Healing Prompts

Last week I shared and analyzed an essay with my sophomores: “Opening the Door of Mercy,” an essay by Karen Round published as part of the “This I Believe” series on NPR. I couldn’t resist discovering the vivid language in her essay and rearranging it into a found poem, something I’ve discovered is helping me read more closely—and attend to language and form. So. . . here are her words rearranged on the page, a kind of distillation of the essay. The sky darkening. The silhouette of a woman sagging on our threshold. Our location forces difficult choices. Wisdom advises to act a Good Samaritan is to be naïve, risk terrible consequences. But when someone approaches, I have to decide: Is my own safety always the most important consideration? Must I fear all whom I don’t know? Do I help or not? I believe repeatedly rejecting others who need help endangers me. So here where we live on that afternoon one summer when the woman was sinking like the sun on my front porch, I made my choice. I opened the door. We discussed in class how this essay could become a kind of mentor text or catalyst—finding that moment or series of moments in one’s life where a choice had to be made—and then using that choice to begin an essay—and, in so doing, to find ways to bring other readers in, to recognize and write our way towards the notion that we are all often facing similar kinds of choices. Like this choice: when a stranger arrives at our threshold, do we open the door or not? (And how do we balance wisdom and compassion when we’re making such choices?) This essay also puts me in mind (yet once again) of Rumi’s poem about the guest house and the way that outer guests and inner guests can mirror each other and correspond. (I’m beginning to suspect this poem by Rumi can connect to many, many things.) 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’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. This could lead to yet another writing idea: Who or what is waiting at the threshold? Is now the right time—or not—to open the door? What might happen if one did? _________________________________________________ See also: Karin Round’s essay at NPR November Angels The Guest House, at...

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