The Healing Power of Poetry

• Therapeutic Characteristics of Poetry
• "Shared Humanity"
• Poetry as a Release
• Poetry for Asperger's Syndrome and Autism
• Therapeutic Benefits of Poetry on the Mind
• Poetry as a Teacher for Children
• The Therapy of Poetry
• Sources

Therapeutic Characteristics of Poetry

While poetry is not everyone’s cup of tea, its value has been touted in many arenas. Poetry is not only valuable for its artistic expression. It can be purely entertaining such as a lusty limerick. It can tell a story like Homer’s Iliad, which also offers historical insights into a time and culture. It can be prayer such as a Psalm in the Bible. One area in which poetry is valuable that is not often thought of quickly is its potential as a therapy although the very characteristics of poetry lend itself to therapeutic purpose as well as enjoyment. Poetry serves as an emotional outlet, a way to put things in a different perspective, a method of sharing and understanding for both the author and the reader.

"Shared Humanity"

There are many examples on the web of poetry for this or that disorder. People suffering from a diverse range of disease such cancer, HIV, addiction, autism and diabetes have found poetry as a medium for expressing what they are going through. Often family members also use poetry. These pieces offer insight and hope to others with the disorder as well as strength in artistic merit. Through poetry, readers and listeners can often find what Janaro terms a “shared humanity” (p. 125).

Poetry as a Release

In today’s society we are often forced to put on faces for the benefit of others. For those who are living through a disease process this mask does not sync with their inner turmoil. Place someone with a painful disorder or impending death at the hands of disease and there is much to keep masked less others run away in the face of whining they do not understand, pain they can not face, or the reality of death that they are so lucky to evade. Poetry serves as a way that pain, despair and brooding, which are unwelcome in many situations, can be expressed. Poetry becomes an outlet for things we can not talk about. Janaro cites Emily Dickinson’s poetry as an example of poetry used as a vent for thoughts and feelings (Janaro, p. 121). Poetry is can also serve as a much needed vent for people who are unable to communicate due to physical or mental disorder.

Poetry for Asperger's Syndrome and Autism

One such group of people is those affected by Asperger’s Syndrome (AS). In AS, a neurological disorder often called ‘high functioning autism’, those affected have a lot of difficulty in social situations and picking up on the more intuitive aspects of communication such as body language, tone of voice and facial expressions. In this exerpt from Autism Is (Also) from her collection of “ASPoetry”, Wendy Lawson paints a simple but stark picture of her own blatant honesty in emotion and literal interpretation of the social interactions around her:

Your world is different.
You don’t run.
You know what is meant.
Life can be such fun.

You hide your fear well,
So no one can see.
I haven’t learnt this,
I can only be me.

Her world, where she “can only be me”, lacks the meaning and feeling that most people all take for granted in their daily lives. Through her words there is a sense of loss in knowing what she is missing – “You know what is meant. Life can be such fun.” For Lawson the poem supplies her with an outlet, for the reader the poem provides an understanding of how people with Asperger’s think.

Therapeutic Benefits of Poetry on the Mind

While enriching the reader by imposing a look at life through a different perspective, poetry, perhaps more importantly, offers the writer benefits that can directly impact on how they handle their disease. Lawson writes:

“For me, poetry is the best way to connect with the emotive experiences associated with everyday life. My autism means being a bit slower in making connections. When I don’t understand something I can write a poem about it. Sometimes the poem opens the door to my understanding. When I’m lost and feeling trapped, sometimes poetry helps me find direction again. When I feel ecstatic and need to express my joy, poetry takes me there.

Although I cannot always solve all of my problems through writing about them, I can at least find a form of written expression that helps me relate to them.” (Lawson, p.11)

Registered poetry therapist Perie Longo had a patient who suffered brain damage as a little girl. As an adult she sought him out to help her write poetry, still maimed by the limited usefulness of her body and the mind of a child. With him writing her words for her she used words to bring her from “despair to hope.” Longo writes of her legacy of poems,

“Perhaps that is the main therapeutic benefit of poetry; words remain forever for they are sound waves. Wherever we go, they follow us, from room to room, unconsciousness to consciousness, denial to acceptance, sorrow to joy. And hopefully to health.”

Alysa Cummings of the OncoLink cancer resource describes a “cancer script” “using poems and pictures as a therapy. The goal of this and other OncoLink poetry projects is “to offer survivors yet another outlet for their feelings, using poetry as a vehicle for creative expression. We also cordially invite survivors and caregivers visiting these webpages to take this opportunity to read the poems, reflect on their own personal cancer scripts and gain new insights into the meaning of the cancer experience.” She further states, “Now that's what I call poetry therapy.” Reading through the OncoLink project poetry one can see poetry used to reaffirm ones self and strength. One example is Patricia Wellington-Jones’ What You See Ain’t What You Get. Wellington-Jones has been a psychology researcher, writer, editor, lecturerThe first few lines are right in the reader's face with her honest description of herself:

I've been sliced and diced
and carved up nice,
put back together
with plastic and wire.

Wellington-Jones continues on to "take on the world" with pride despite her surgical alterations and when "the mood's right" she warns her would-be lover as she affirms her womanhood because she is:

one hell of a woman,
and those knives
didn't change me at all.

This poem not only lends the reader a sense of strength against adversities but it also leaves impression that it has bolstered its author’s courage and strength as well claimed her ability to love.

Poetry as a Means of Exploration

UCLA psychiatrist Robert Carroll encourages his clients to use poetry to express themselves, and often uses these pieces as a way to break ground into problem areas. He points out that the focus of a person’s disease is often their physical status rather than how they deal with the disease and what we can learn from them. He uses poetry to “talk someone through a traumatic experience or to help them understand the implications of their diagnosis or to aid them in finding the words to write their own stories and poetry.”

Poetry as a Teacher for Children

Poetry therapy is not limited to the writer being the afflicted. Joan Fleitas writes poetry directed at children trying to understand their medical problems. In I’m So Sweet she goes through a child’s experience of diabetes in a manner that teaches as well as understands. The child’s experience is quite different than an adults as Fleitas demonstrates in this exerpt from I'm So Sweet:

My mama called me sugar plum, my daddy called me sweets.
Aunt Jennifer said “honey bunch, your cheeks are red as beets”.
I’d always thought it special to have nicknames that were yummy,
But that’s before I threw up and had problems with my tummy.
I didn't know what was happening,
And I was scared.

For children not only is poetry helpful to be able to relate to the emotional aspects of the disease but it can also be used to help bring understanding to the physical aspects of the disease as Fleitas does later in the poem:

Your pancreas makes insulin, a hormone that is busy
Finding sugar, sticking to it, so you won't go in a tizzy.
Without insulin, this sugar doesn't know quite what to do,
So it backs up in the blood stream causing problems by the slew.

Within her poetry Fleitas’ relates to her readers with empathy, understanding, humor and level of education. Its healing power lies within all of these aspects although her primary goal of her “medical poetry” is to offer children ways to discuss their diseases with other childen and some others as well.

The Therapy of Poetry

Because we tend to think of disease in terms of its clinical process it might be easy to ask, just how is poetry therapeutic? Avoiding a discussion on the mind-body connection and the physical affects state of mind can have, we'll assume for the sake of discussion that poetry doesn’t cure cancer, dispel addiction or heal HIV patients. There are physical reactions from poetry. Reciting ancient Greek hexameter verse has shown increased synchronization between breathing and heart rhythms, more so than periods of controlled breathing or rest (Cyartz). In another study, secretion of immunoglobulin A was increased after writing poetry (Lowe). The same can be said of other forms of art. However, as Carroll reminds us, healing is not necessarily the removal of disease but is making one whole again. When cancer patient and OncoLink projecteer Alyssa Cummings decided to engage in psychiatric therapy she was feeling lost. She wrote:

“Cancer treatment is wreaking predictable havoc - from the inside out, from the outside in - on my body, my spirit, my life. What's most upsetting is that when I look in the mirror I can't find any "me" that even looks vaguely familiar.”

It was in this broken, ‘un-whole’ state that Cummings turned to poetry. Wholeness can occur at the individual level but its greater impact is on family and community levels, which support the individual. Poetry is a natural healer as it provides benefits to the writer and reader. And while, again, it is not every one’s cup of tea, it is a valuable resource whether used as a voice, a way to understand the disease experience, or to initiate further discussion for those suffering from disease.