POETRY

Poetry Changes You as Nothing Else Can

Glimpses into the magical world beyond

During my 10-day silent retreat, reading was forbidden. You could write, draw, walk, meditate, pray, eat, smile. Even browse the bookstore — so tantalizing. But no reading.

Each day I’d meet with Rob, my spiritual director. That was the only non-silent part of the day, chatting with Rob.

A couple of days in, I went on a walk in the country lanes around the retreat center, and I told Rob about what happened:

“A butterfly landed in the hedgerow, right in front of me,” I said. “I just watched. It was a beautiful blue and white. Then I reached out to touch it, to cup it in my hands, and it flew away.”

The incident left me overwhelmed with wonder. I told Rob how it reminded me of some lines from William Blake:

He who binds himself to a joy Does the wingèd life destroy He who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity’s sunrise

As Rob’s role was to be my spiritual guide, I expected him to use this as a starting point of interrogation, to ask: “What joys are you binding yourself to?” or something like that.

But that wasn’t Rob’s way. Instead, he asked: “Do you like poetry, then?”

When Rob asked the question, I hadn’t really thought about whether I liked poetry. I figured maybe I did. I also wondered: Was it really that unusual to memorize and recite William Blake? But I didn’t say that aloud.

“Maybe you should read some poetry in the library,” Rob said.

I double-checked with Rob that I’d understood correctly. I was on silent retreat. Reading was forbidden. There was a library? And my spiritual director was telling me to go there?

He said yes, that’s what he was suggesting that I do.

My bibliophile heart fluttered with joy. I made a pledge with myself that I would only look at poetry books. I’d stick to the rules of the retreat, only using the exemption Rob had given me. I spent much of the rest of the retreat in the library. I devoured the poetry shelves and got lost in the lines of Rilke and Rumi.

I’m not always sure if I do like poetry. Much of it feels impenetrable to me, too much like hard work.

But when a poem is written in simple language, in words that I can follow that dance on the page, I’m into that. Especially if the poem points to deeper meaning, and acts as a bridge between this world and the things beyond.

To me, poetry at its best is liminal, pulling us out of the mundane and into the magical, showing that our identity is not bound to this physical world, but exists somewhere beyond. Poetry leads to an inner Narnia on the other side of a wardrobe where, maybe, we are called to a bigger story.

The world is bigger than we know. There are more than bluebirds over the rainbow; there’s more than a pot of gold at the rainbow’s end.

Poems, to me, are maps to Narnia, a flight path over the rainbow. Poems show you where to find the real gold, the things we cannot put words to. Poems lead us to the treasure that makes us rich in ways that feel impossible to articulate. Poems say the unsayable, using words to point to a place beyond words. Poems guide us to a place where meaning is deeper, hearts are stronger, where breath becomes sky and sky becomes diamonds.

Poetry, as Gregory D. Welch puts it, “changes you like nothing else can”.

The things we can’t quite grasp are what really matters. Poetry lets us reach out to touch those things. You get a kiss with eternity, and afterward, you’re not 100% certain whether it happened or not. You get a glimpse of the world beyond, a peek behind the wardrobe into Narnia, and then it’s gone.

To convey that paradox through poetry without getting lost in wordiness is a gift I thought few writers possessed. I’ve found only a handful of poets I connect with. That is, until I discovered poetry on Medium.

In saying that poetry changes us like nothing else can, Gregory D. Welch is referring to how being a poet has changed him. He’s talking about having words and images swirling in your mind, then stirring them up with magic to make the fairy dust of poems.

But poetry can change you in other ways too. You don’t have to write poetry for it to touch your soul. Reading or memorizing a poem can be an emotional or spiritual transformation.

The best poems, by which I mean the ones I most connect with, give me inner sparkles. I can’t describe it by saying it’s a spiritual tingling, a release of powerful inner energies.

I come from a spiritual tradition that professes “we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come”.

Contrary to what many within and outside faith would believe, faith for me is not about being at a final destination, or about having the answers, it’s about looking, seeing, openness, a search for the world beyond things. It’s about looking for the life of the world to come — whatever that world may mean to you.

And yet it’s outside the realms of faith, in literature and poetry, that I find the looking and openness to be more poignant, more pointed.

Here are four poems on Medium that light up my spirit.

The very first poem I read on Medium was “Its Chipped Paint a Solemn Promise” by Gregory D. Welch, and I was immediately hooked. I love how Welch mixes the magical and mundane with lines like “He brewed a night sky in an old tea cup”:

Shortly afterward I encountered “The Sailor’s Gambit” by Holly Jahangiri, which I read as being about living in the space between despair and hope — and moving towards the thing on the horizon that we will never reach:

In “Wildflowers”, Upen Singh poses a dozen questions that on the one hand seem nonsensical, and on the other point to the heart of what really matters:

“Raining Diamonds” by Jenine Bsharah Baines leans into the tension between the explained and the unexplainable, between science and mystery. The final line made me catch my breath, and the poem is all the more powerful when you know the story behind it, which Baines shares beneath the poem:

Poetry changes you as nothing else can — please take some moments to read the poems above, and let the poets know how their words impacted you.

What are the poems on Medium that have changed you or stuck with you? Please share them in the comments — I’d love to read them.