Poetry Can Teach Us Much About Self-Love

In these tumultuous times — let poetry lift your soul

Poetry is certainly a gift to the one who bears a poem, births a poem, and breathes life into that poem. To the catalyst for a poem; the mere existence of a poem within is potentially monumental. What gift it is to the reader, however, is subjective. When it comes to personal growth, self-care and self-love, and finding inspiration throughout the day, poetry is often overlooked as a valued path.

Poetry isn’t simply an arrangement of pretty words; it’s a collection of messages, imaginative images, and emotional depth all packaged in pretty words. It is a great teacher and if applied as part of a self-care mission, it can be powerful. When it comes to our individual needs, poetry can help us learn to find fulfillment and maintain a sense of curiosity, wonder, and a deep sense of meaning in our lives, with or without a love companion. We are our own companions from birth until death, while loves outside ourselves will come in waves and few will be enduring.

Though poets often lament after romantic love, telling the stories of loves gained, explored, and sometimes lost, they also remind us through their work that love can be felt and shared and nurtured, beginning with ourselves.

Love Is Valuable and Constant

What is love? Humans have been trying to understand exactly what love is and is not since the beginning of poetic language, or at least 18th century B.C. when The Epic of Gilgamesh brought a grand search for deeper life meaning. Since poets have such a deep connection to both human emotion and the world around them, and most would agree have a certain sensory vision of the world — when they speak on love, let’s listen.

This poetry quote speaks to the stability and strength of love, which does not alter when the world around is shifting and changing. Meaning, love endures. When all things in your life become tumultuous, unpredictable, or bring intense levels of change, I ask, how can you apply the message of these Shakespearean verses to how you love yourself?

Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand’ring bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

— William Shakespeare, excerpt from Sonnet 116

Perhaps you are far too hard on yourself, seeing flaws and continually pointing them out to yourself. (Would you appreciate it if anyone else treated you that way? Then do not do that to yourself.) Speak to yourself with the “ever-fixed mark” of inner respect and love for yourself. Shakespeare often lamented between lovers, but his words here can be applied to how we appreciate love in our lives both from others and from our own spirit.

Growing as a Person — and Never Giving Up

I can’t read this poem without hearing the deeply moving, captivating voice of Maya Angelo reading it. One of the most famous American poets, Angelo teaches us to dig deep within ourselves and find that unapologetic strength — that deep part of us that needs to be unleashed and worn with both the ferocity and tenderness of authentic truth.

Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I’ll rise. — Maya Angelou, from “Still I Rise”

The cathartic ancestral flow of this poem elicits and internal mantra-music that can lift you on the toughest of days:

I rise… I rise… I rise…

This is one of those poems I have repeated to myself in times of intense trauma or stress. Try accepting the words of your abuser with these words repeating in your mind like a mantra. (Another story, another time.)

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise. — Maya Angelou, from “Still I Rise”

Make Your Own Decisions, Bravely

Navigating life, no doubt, will lead you to a series of converged paths and you alone can choose what is right for you. In one of my favorite poems, Robert Frost found himself at a forked path in a wooded area and chose the path with fewer footsteps in the leaves, a decision that had impact on all other events in his life. Thinking back to that moment, appreciating the gravity of that moment in the woods, gives us a poem that teaches us to cherish the power of those moments in our lives. The wonder. The imagination. The hopeful curiosity with which we have the choice to face our own futures — this is a true lesson in poetry. Ironically, the poem was written as a literary poke at Frost’s indecisive poet friend Edward Thomas. But as a poem often does — it takes another road all on its own.

For us, as we choose each step, each narrow and sometimes lonely path, this poem can serve as a reminder to notice the beauty along the way.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

— The Road Not Taken BY ROBERT FROST

Finding Joy in Daily Life

Poets don’t only write about dismal days and tragic loss. They also pay homage to the mundane, the simple, and the finite ways we can experience happiness each and every day if we only would open our eyes and hearts to the idea. Pablo Neruda, born Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, a Chilean poet and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971, is likely one of the most influential Latin American poets to date.

His poem Ode to the Happy Day speaks to us of the regularity of a day and teaches us to celebrate it, to celebrate our place in it, and to see the world through the chosen lens of positivity, self- acceptance and mindful observation.

This time let me be happy. Nothing has happened to anybody, I am nowhere special, it happened only that I am happy through the four chambers of my heart, walking, sleeping or writing. What can I do? I am happy, I am more uncountable than the meadow grass I feel my skin like a wrinkled tree and the water below, the birds above, the sea like a ring around my waist, the Earth is made of bread and stone, the air sings like a guitar. — excerpt from Pablo Neruda: Ode to the Happy Day

Motivation and Self-empowerment

William Earnest Henley was friends with the author of Treasure Island, Robert Lewis Stevenson, when the classic novel was penned. Apparently, Henley’s appearance was so distinct that he inspired the pirate character in Treasure Island. Henley’s poem Invictus has also inspired filmmakers, speechwriters, and literature professors since, giving us those treasured lines of ‘I am the master of my fate, / I am the captain of my soul.’ The self-empowerment and existential motivation found in lines from Invictus can serve as a poetic pick-me-up, anytime you need it.

Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed … — W. E. Henley, ‘Invictus’.

Perseverance and Hope

The irony is not lost in choosing a Sylvia Plath poem to represent perseverance, digging deep for inner strength, and reminding yourself that no matter your circumstances, you can press on to claim your place in the sun. But this is because with Plath’s death, the stigma of her mental illness seemed to be permanently etched into her head stone; when her work clearly demonstrates more than her disease.

Likely, you haven’t read Mushrooms. Though Mushrooms isn’t a widely-known poem by quite possibly one of the most brilliant poetic minds of all time, (my assertion) there are deep lessons to be found and enjoyed in this poem, written in 1960 and published in The Colossus and Other Poems.

Though Plath’s dark brilliance helped me to navigate my testy teen years, she’s not often a poet I’d think about when it comes to motivation or self care. I encourage you to see past her mental illness and untimely death, to see other layers of her poetry that are quite inspiring, like this poem (here in its entirety).

Overnight, very Whitely, discreetly, Very quietly

Our toes, our noses Take hold on the loam, Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us, Stops us, betrays us; The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on Heaving the needles, The leafy bedding,

Even the paving. Our hammers, our rams, Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless, Widen the crannies, Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water, On crumbs of shadow, Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing. So many of us! So many of us!

We are shelves, we are Tables, we are meek, We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers In spite of ourselves. Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning Inherit the earth. Our foot’s in the door.

— Mushrooms by Sylvia Plath

I encourage you to spend some time with this poem and look for that feminine spirit, the simple hope, as well as the metaphor here, that you can find in something as simple as mushrooms growing, and apply it to your own life. You can feel the drive for life, burning in the organic spaces of our spirit, and breathing still today through Plath’s poem.

Poetry Can Teach Us a Lot About How We Love

The romantics know poetry is a go-to for inspiration. But there are many forms of love including philautia, self-love, which when healthy and nourished, (but also in check to curb elevated self-importance, or an inflated sense of one’s own abilities) is a key component to living a balanced life and a happy one. Poets have their finger on the pulse of these things, often, and if we give the time and space for poetic lessons to take root within us, we can deepen that philautian love that we all need. If we view poetry, both classic and modern, as teaching tools rather than pure entertainment, we may find the mysteries between the lines unfold a little more clearly and the takeaway to help us grow and love ourselves a little more poetically.