The Poetry That Saves Us

Paul Klee “Fairy Tales”

During these troubled times, the wars raging in Gaza and Ukraine, when our hearts are broken and we feel so helpless against the constant slaughter, what do we turn to for solace?

A poet once said that while we can’t get the news from poetry, men die every day for lack of what is found there. The thing we find in poetry that saves us, that renews us, that keeps us from dying, is the “poetry” we find in life, in nature, in city streets, in the people we love, in human experience. In our deepest feelings and highest aspirations.

So much of written poetry is about discerning the poetry in ordinary life, in things forgotten, overlooked, and dismissed, and unfurling the wonder of it all across a page for all to read.

The ability to see poetry in all the aspects of our lives is what saves us. We don’t have to be poets to see the beauty, symmetry, grace in our surroundings; the imperfect perfection of ordinary things; the repetitions and patterns, the rhymes and rhythms that surround us, or to hear the alliteration, and the way assonance and dissonance complement and complete each other; the contradictions and similarities of things, the subtle differences and deep complexities that give depth to the human experience; the humor and irony, the paradox and profundity that weaves itself through our lives.

In all of this is the poetry that poets write about. It’s what makes life rich and diverse and meaningful. It’s what moves us toward compassion and forgiveness, inspires us toward greatness, and fills us with hope and humility.

And it’s what can lift our anguished hearts in troubled times, lift them high enough to not turn away and not despair.

The discernment and appreciation of the subtle and glorious intricacies of this grand tapestry in which we are woven–-this is what saves us.

I wrote the following poem during the Covid crisis, realizing how much I needed that felt-sense of poetry in my life again.

Poetry in the Time of Corona

Leaf shadows thrown by the morning sun against a creamy wall.

Soft, sensuous folds of a warm blanket tossed across my knees.

My grandmotherly hands wrapped around a mug as I sip sweet coffee.

So much I fail to see in the time of corona.

Or seeing, fail to note,

Or noting, fail to feel

What once I felt.

Poetry all around me.

— Deborah J. Brasket, April 30, 2020