How Poetry Can Help Us?

How can Poetry Help Us?

For many of us, poetry has been sort of a distant and complex concept. As being part of a poet’s or an artist’s audience, our task is usually merely to read and simply enjoy what the former chooses to share with the world. However, more often than not, poetry has been inaccessible in the way that it is presented. The level of vocabulary used is oftentimes not readily intelligible and requires a vast knowledge of the words and their meaning when used in a particular context. 

Is Poetry Helpful

The art of poetry is somewhat a double-edged sword because from the perspective of the poet, exceptional and precise use of language is that which makes the piece far more intricate compared to other forms and styles of writing. Success from the point of view of a poet lies and will probably remain in the honed ability to express emotion with words in consideration of the accuracy that is expected. 

How Words Can Be Helpful

Poems come in the form of words. This is the basic form of poetry. Its extraordinary use of words is applauded. The conveyance of meaning, of emotions, of ideas through vocabulary gives us, the audience, an unrivaled visual without actually using diagrams or photos. It evokes emotion in a way that is not visually striking as compared to, let us say, a painting or a sculpture. In the same way, a single poem, without any accompanying message or clarification from the poet himself, shall incite a myriad of meanings from its readers. To which we answer with feeling. Whatever feeling, be it of joy or of sorrow, is entirely up to us and how we interpret it. 

 

It is critical to remember that we are worlds of meaning on our own. We are made up of memories, and of experiences, in the many years, we have walked this earth. Poetry helps us in the same manner that clocks tell time. In poetry, we find ourselves in a perpetual state of reminder. Poetry reminds us that there is life outside what is in front of us, our daily struggles. 

Poetry is essential to creative thinking

Poetry somehow brings us to another place—to midnight in Paris, in the middle of the ocean, to the moment we fall in love. It is a constant reminder that with us, as a collective species, time does not exist. We can be in Paris in the middle of the night. We have been stuck in a sailboat in the middle of the ocean. We have been in love—gloriously in love and in more ways than we can humanly count. 

9 Ways Poetry is Helpful

  1. Poetry helps us all make sense of this changing, unpredictable world around us. Ever notice how stuck we are in going about our mundane lives in black and white, and whenever we come across a poem, our eyes suddenly revert back to technicolor? Poems romanticize this life deeply, and it is something that we should constantly do. 
  2. History has given us the pleasure of producing thousands upon thousands of poems for our perusal. There are many hours in a day for us to gift ourselves with the amusement of reading a poem. The world is a colossal place, and it might appear to be too daunting a task to visit all the locations we want to in a single lifetime. This is not meant to seem worrisome, but poems give us a solution.
  3. Poems being an unassuming visual piece, it aids our imagination. Sure, it would be easier to google up an image of the Swiss Alps or the pyramids of Egypt or the beaches of the Philippines on your smartphone—but would it not be a much more satisfying experience if you, yourself, conjured it with your imagination? It definitely serves a larger and heftier plate of mystery and fantasy, reading of a place from a poem. It allows you to let your mind loose and permit it to wander. Allow yourself to walk around the very places you are reading about rather than just looking at a still image on a phone screen. Look without using your eyes. See, without actually seeing the cobblestone streets, lit by the distant gleam of lights from the Eiffel tower, with a breeze much like from flipping the pages of an unopened book. Poetry takes you to places you have never been to before. 
  4. Poetry is rooted in emotion, in feelings. It is immensely more straightforward to write about feelings because they are naturally unfettered, raw, and reeling. Poetry helps us make sense of our emotions even before we take the time to understand them. That moment when you first start to realize that you have fallen head over heels for a person, their eyes seem to glimmer with the hope of brighter days ahead. That moment of losing someone close to you and near and dear to your heart, the deafening echoes of their last words spoken and the faint umbra of the words that were left unsaid. That moment of unadulterated joy in serendipity, the smell and taste of your favorite coffee by the window sill ringing from the first rain of May. Poems have this natural ability to convey and demand a reaction from the reader, always tugging at the heartstrings. 
  5. To memories, poems owe much of its beauty as well. There is nothing quite classic as the incomparable effect of nostalgia. Poems bring us back as much as it demands your full attention. In order to fully understand a poem, one must be open enough to embrace it in all its charm. Right as the words come off a page, you are taken back to a time when you thought you forgot with eyes unfamiliar but ours in an odd sense. At the present time, you might be enjoying a cup of chamomile tea in your pajamas before going to bed but with the added spice of reading a poem by Robert Frost. Before you realize it, you are taken back to one of the winters spent in your family’s cabin, assisting the doze by stopping by the woods on the same snowy evening. There is just enough allure with reminiscing about the past that brings comfort to an otherwise uncertain future.
  6. Poetry is about sharing experiences as a collective. It is about using words and rhythm to communicate these adventures, or maybe misadventures, these emotions, these memories, to draw gracious delights from. Perhaps in one way or another, it serves a purpose in your life where you can find clarity—the opportunity is ours to grab. 
  7. Another great thing about it is these are all possible even if you cannot write a single line of poetry if your life depended on it. Past the humor of human limitations, poetry brings you a renewed sense of “anything is possible.” In order to gloriously move forward in life, one must be willing enough to embrace the uncertainty of tomorrow with the gift of beauty amidst bewilderment. 
  8. As far as we know, and as far as what has been discussed, poetry helps us by bringing back the romance in our ordinary lives. It adds music and rhythm back into the stillness of passing a class or furthering a career. It is easy to get lost the duties lull of everyday life. Of course, there are many more pressing things, but is the clock not there to remind us that there is time to spare? 
  9. Life is but borrowed time, and it is our duty to inject as much beauty in it as we can. It is a blessing to be able to see in words, and it is ours to enjoy. Live every moment as if you are the main character. Bring yourself to places you have never been to before. Go out and experience feelings and emotions that you are scared of and let it consume you. Relish in the invisible and let it bring you peace.