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.
Shine by Joni Mitchell
This song is one that can often restore me to sanity when I stray from it. It reminds me—that no matter what is going on—rising oceans—empty nets—tunnel vision—there’s a sane response—to all of it. Oh yes, right, that too, I can shine my attention on that—shine light on that. It puts me in mind of the fabric in Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem, Kindness—the way we can begin, sometimes, to get a feel for the size of the cloth—how enormous it is—how warped and flawed and various and beautiful. Oh...
from November Angels by Jane Hirshfield
A single, cold blossom tumbles, fledged from the sky’s white branch. And the angels look on, observing what falls: all of it falls . . . Angels as observers. The afternoon lengthens, steepens, flares out— no matter for them. It is assenting that makes them angels, neither increased nor decreased by the clamorous heart: their only work to shine back, however the passing brightness hurts their eyes. Angels watching. Saying yes. Shining back. It is assenting that makes them angels The full text of November Angels used to be...
November Angels?
One thing leads to another. Three years ago I wrote about the poem, “My November Guest,” by Robert Frost. This morning I found myself looking at the poem again. It’s a poem in which the speaker becomes aware of sorrow as a guest and begins to understand how deeply sorrow appreciates “the desolate, deserted trees/ the faded earth, the heavy sky.” Since I first came across Frost’s poem I’ve been struck by his notion: feelings as simply guests. Nothing more or less. They come and they go. A particular...