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 chosen, 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.
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
Diving into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich
III. Poems that might offer company during a difficult time
The Guest House by Rumi
A Ritual to Read to Each Other by William Stafford
Satellite Call by Sara Bareilles
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
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
Report from a Far Place by William Stafford
who knows if the moon’s a by e.e. cummings
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. Poems about the process of reading
Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins
V. Poems for considering purpose
Every Craftsman by Rumi.
Praying by Mary Oliver
It doesn’t have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones; just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don’t try to make them elaborate, this isn’t a contest but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak. So I’m thinking this poem by Mary Oliver could be instructions for a writer—or instructions for a teacher—which, if looked at in a certain way, are perhaps not that different. I’m at...
Instructions
Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ from “Sometimes” by Mary Oliver, from her collection, Red Bird (2008) Photo from next to our living room window....
Morning Poem by Mary Oliver
I’m not much of one for New Year’s resolutions, but I am someone who tends to pay attention at the beginning of a new year. What is possible? What might be trying to happen in this next year? What could happen? “Morning Poem,” is one I came across just before the new year. It speaks to that sense at the beginning of some mornings—or at the beginning of some years?—a sense that something new is happening, again, all over again. Or could be. This is how it begins:...
Everything, a Found Poem
Often I am asked, Who taught me to write? Everything All the blank times, the daydreaming, the boredom, the American legacy of loneliness and alienation, the sky,the desk, a pen, the pavement, small towns I’ve driven through. Writing became the tool I used To digest my life Not because everything was hunky-dory But because we can use everything we are. We have no choice. Our job is to wake up to everything. ____________________________________ from Natalie Goldberg’s Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up in America (p. 19, Bantam trade...
From Shine by Joni Mitchell: A Poem for the Shortening Days of December
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 can be found...
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...
Enough: A Poem for a November Morning
I like this poem by Jeffrey Harrison for its apparent simplicity. For its timeliness—a warm cloudless November morning. For its honesty—that surprise toward the end of the first stanza when the speaker of the poem admits to a mind that is not quiet but is instead roiled with personal grievance. It’s a gift, this cloudless November morning warm enough for you to walk without a jacket along your favorite path. The rhythmic shushing of your feet through fallen leaves should be enough to quiet the mind, so it surprises...
A Conversation with the Poem, Kindness
Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Oh. I didn’t get this the first...
A Dialogue or Conversation Poem: A Prompt for Writing and Healing
In a classic dialogue poem, as I understand it, you create two characters and they carry on a conversation—in poetry. A variation on this theme—a conversation poem?—is a writing idea I’ve shared with my students. I’ve been thinking for a while now that this existed somewhere in the world, and it probably does, but then again it’s possible I may have made it up. In any case, the way I’m thinking about a conversation poem is you actually write your lines between the poet’s lines—in a conversation. I think...