Healing Poetry

Every Craftsman by Rumi

Posted by Diane Morrow on June 12, 2007 in Healing Images, Healing Poetry, Writing Ideas

For the past week or so I’ve been looking for a poem that would speak somehow to revision—and I couldn’t quite find what I was looking for. And then I found this poem by Rumi. It’s not what I thought I was looking for—it does something slightly different. But at the same time it feels like the right next image for revision. For looking again. For looking at the big picture. And what was it again that I wanted to write? What did I hope would come of this? What can I do with the pages I’ve written? What do I hope will come of this? Not infrequently, I find that when people come up against a serious illness or a serious loss–or any kind of significant transition—they may find themselves, eventually, asking certain kinds of questions: And what is it that I’m here for? What is my piece? What is my gift? What do I want to leave behind? Rumi’s poem, Every Craftsman, speaks to these questions. Here are the first 17 lines: I’ve said before that every craftsman searches for what’s not there to practice his craft. A builder looks for the rotten hole where the roof caved in. A water-carrier picks the empty pot. A carpenter stops at the house with no door. Workers rush toward some hint of emptiness, which they then start to fill. Their hope, though, is for emptiness, so don’t think you must avoid it. It contains what you need! Dear soul, if you were not friends with the vast nothing inside, why would you always be casting your net into it, and waiting so patiently? Rumi’s poem is another way of asking: What is the one piece of writing that you, and only you, can write? What emptiness is waiting to be filled? Orhan Pamuk, a Turkish writer, said (among other things) in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech: “I write because I want others, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey.” What sort of life is it that you—and only you—can write about? What gap is waiting?...

The Guest House by Rumi: A Quiet Revolution?

Posted by Diane Morrow on May 8, 2007 in Guest House, Healing Images, Healing Language and Healing Images, Healing Poetry

I came across this poem, The Guest House, by Rumi, for the first time, week before last, when I was looking for a clean link for Mary Oliver’s poem, The Journey. Here are the first twelve lines: 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. How wonderful is that? The image of sorrow and all the other emotions—joy yes—but also the difficult ones—anger—shame—fear—all as visitors—some pleasant visitors and some more difficult ones—and all of them guests. And guests with a broom no less. Sweeping through the rooms—clearing it. Rumi’s lines here resonate for me with those lines by Paul Simon from his song, “Sound of Silence”: Hello darkness, my old friend I’ve come to talk with you again. But now I’m picturing Darkness with a broom. Full text of Rumi’s poem Photo by Vladimir Shioshvili at Wikimedia Commons: Brooms for Sale in a Tbilisi...

The Journey by Mary Oliver: A Poem for Writing and Healing

Posted by Diane Morrow on April 26, 2007 in Healing Poetry

A few weeks ago now a reader of this site sent me some poems by Mary Oliver. (Thank you.) Out of the poems she sent, the one that strikes me most—the one that seems to fit best with the thread of this month—two steps forward and one step back—is this poem by Oliver that I’ve seen in a number of places. It’s a poem that speaks to that in the world which would pull us back. It’s a poem that speaks to what can sometimes be required in order to move forward. The full text is here. It’s a poem that seems to have touched a chord with a number of people. Ten years ago, the NAPT (the National Association for Poetry Therapy) did a survey of poetry therapists, asking them which poems they most often selected to use with clients, and it turns out that of twenty-two poems frequently selected, this poem—The Journey—was at the very top of the list. The poem speaks to a stark truth—that sometimes—in certain situations—one has to do what is necessary to save one’s own life—first—– It’s a poem of rather haunting images and I suspect that’s one of the reasons it so often touches people. The way that images—poetic language—can sometimes touch us at a deep place when other kinds of ordinary language can’t quite— Today, these images—these eight lines from the middle of the poem—are the ones that strike me most: You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations— though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and...

Robert Frost’s Two Tramps in Mud Time: A Poem for April

Posted by Diane Morrow on April 1, 2007 in Healing Poetry

I found these seven lines from Robert Frost’s Two Tramps in Mud Time. I think they resonate well with the way that I’m thinking about this month—the way that reversals can happen suddenly—out of the blue—without warning. It might be warm, or at least sunny, beautiful, everything blooming, and then——not so much. The sun was warm but the wind was chill. You know how it is with an April day When the sun is out and the wind is still, You’re one month on in the middle of May. But if you so much as dare to speak, A cloud comes over the sunlit arch, A wind comes off a frozen peak, And you’re two months back in the middle of March. He’s so matter of fact. This is the way it is sometimes—on certain...

Diving into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich

Posted by Diane Morrow on March 27, 2007 in Healing Images, Healing Poetry

I recently came across a poem, Diving into the Wreck, by Adrienne Rich. (I found it in Staying Alive, the anthology. You can also find it here.) The poem is a quest poem—but it describes a different kind of quest. Not a quest across the surface of the earth. But down. It begins—the first six lines—with a gathering of resources: First having read the book of myths, and loaded the camera, and checked the edge of the knife-blade, I put on the body-armor of black rubber the absurd flippers the grave and awkward mask It’s interesting to me how just typing these lines allows me to pay a kind of closer attention to the language than I do when I ordinarily read. It slows me down. Especially coming to that last line—the grave and awkward mask. So, then: a book of myths, a camera, a blade, body armor, those absurd flippers, that grave and awkward mask. These are the resources for this dive. And no companions. Not this time. The speaker of the poem announces this at the end of the first stanza: she’s not doing this with a team like Cousteau—but alone. A ladder appears. She begins to climb down. Down through layers. Down through blue, then bluer, green—then black. This is a different kind of quest. A metaphorical quest. A quest down through layers. And why keep going? In the sixth stanza, she names the reason for this particular quest: I came to explore the wreck. The words are purposes. The words are maps. I came to see the damage that was done And the treasures that prevail. The words are purposes. The words are maps. And then those lines naming two companions: the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail. It seems to me that when it comes to quests we need to know two things—especially for the difficult quests—the ones that involve some exploration of wreckage, some measure of sorrow. I think we need to know that the exploration itself has some meaning—a purpose. And I think we need to know that there’s some possibility—some hope—even perhaps a promise—of treasure—jewels amid or beneath the wreckage. What Arthur Frank would call the boon of the quest. There has to be some boon. I had a writing teacher once who used to say that stories need to be bearable. One way, I think, of making stories of wreckage bearable is to figure out what the treasure is—to recognize the treasure amid the wreckage. No matter how elusive—or unexpected—no matter that the treasure doesn’t look the way we thought it would look when we finally come upon it. _____________________________________ See also: The wounded...

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