Writers’ Pantry #70: Words for Healing

Well, dear Wordsmiths, poetry won’t set your broken leg, detoxify your swollen tonsils or stop a burn from blistering – let alone prevent the spread of COVID – but it has at times helped me get through grief and other emotional trauma.

Sometimes that's been due to reading poems which express similar grief and trauma. When someone manages to convey exactly what you're feeling, in all its anguish, it can have a cathartic effect more deeply healing than any soothing words of comfort.

A E Housman’s White in the Moon the Long Road Lies is one that has helped me through loss of love in the past. And his The Rain It Streams On Stone and Hillock, a denial of grief which utterly fails to deny it, has helped me mourn my dead. Beneath a bleak but stoical tone, both these pieces are full of anguish.

Or, it can help to read poems which have nothing to do with such emotions but instead remind us of the glories of nature, in such a way as to take us out of ourselves. Pretty much anything of Mary Oliver’s can do that for me.

Oliver knew she was doing it, for all the me's out here whom she would never meet. She accepted it as her task. 'My work is loving the world,' she said, 'Let me / keep my mind on what matters, / which is my work, / which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.' And she said it in a poem called Messenger.

She did it for herself too. In another poem, Dogfish, she said: 

  I wanted
to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,
whoever I was, I was

alive
for a little while.

Quite so. Writing one’s own poetry can be deeply healing. Sadly, over the last year many poets have found themselves unable to write, ground down by the pandemic and other horrors. It's not surprising; we are sensitive souls, let's face it. Yet for poets to be unable to express themselves is surely the ultimate in despair!

At such times, I find it helps to (a) look outside myself, and (b) turn to the short forms – to capture a moment, an impression, rather than dwell on the larger picture.  Haiku and senryu are ways to do that. I also love trying UK writer Satya Robyn’s idea: ‘small stones’. (I’ve mentioned them before, a time or seven. They’re a favourite practice for me. But for anyone who hasn’t heard of them before:) You focus on some small thing you encounter in your environment, whether beautiful or in some other way interesting, pick it up as if it were a small stone, take it home and polish it. My own small stones are most often in verse, but that's not a requirement.

 

Perhaps it is stories which heal you? There are times when I disappear into a wallow of escapist reading. Regency Romances work; so does Young Adult Fantasy. I have friends who love detective stories; others who create their own fictional adventures as gamers. (Never appealed to me – I'm not much of a fiction writer anyway – but my Firstborn is an avid gamer, along with many of his mates.)

As I so seldom write fiction, if I’m going to try and help myself in prose, it’s likely to be an account of what I’m feeling and why. Writing it out, a bit like a journal entry – if I kept a journal. (My poems are my journal.) Such an account might turn out to be a prose poem, or an excerpt for a memoir I may possibly complete some day.

I'm curious. How do words help you find healing when you need it? Perhaps you are one who prefers to read soothing, comforting words? Or maybe you turn to comedy to take your mind off things? Some of us, I know, in times of need, write poems which are essentially prayers – for ourselves and/or the world. And very beautiful they can be. I think the act of praying, publicly or privately, can be immensely healing for oneself as well as those one prays for.

I’d love you to leave a little note here in the comments, if you care to, to answer my question. 

After all that – please regale us with a poem or story, old or new, on any subject. If you’re giving us prose, please make it 369 words max, excluding title.

 

For those who like a little advance notice:

Next Wednesday Rommy will be inviting us to compose either a list poem or a prose piece that incorporates the idea of a list.

 

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Material shared here is presented for study and review. Poems, photos, and other writings and images remain the property of the copyright owners, usually the authors. (Older material may be out of copyright).

Photo of river pebbles by Fyre Willow on Unsplash.

Wild Fridays #22: Roving the Web

Hello, Dear Earth

(I didn't have to rove very far to find the following; it turned up in my email.) 

I'm writing to you during times of pandemic, race riots, dangerous politics. Looming over all of this terrible suffering is the ongoing destruction of our beautiful planet, which is already disproportionately affecting the most vulnerable of us. It is appropriate to feel grief, fear, rage, disconnect, or despair.   How can we live through these times without being consumed by the darkness? How can we find the balance between denial and overwhelm? How can we steady ourselves in order that we may enjoy the gifts we've been given, and do our little bit?   For me, the answer is always refuge. We need to find something bigger than us that we can lean into, and then we need to lean. I've written a new free e-course that I hope will support you to lean into our dear Earth - with all her complexity, wisdom and beauty. It will take you ten minutes a day and involves finishing the sentences of a magic formula. I've written it as an offering to her, and to you. I hope you like it. It'd be good to hear how you are. Reply to this email and let me know.  Sending many blessings from the temple here in Malvern, a little piece of paradise, with the blackbird singing and the sun shining down. I'm feeling humble, grateful, and overflowing with dear Earth's love. <3  * Hello Dear Earth. Here I am, at my desk on this Sunday morning, thinking of everyone who will receive my email. Earth - you are quiet here, and in other places people are screaming. Leaning in, I feel sadness welling up. Listing gratitude - the cornflower blue of my office wall, wildflowers in the little vase next to the Buddha, two sleeping dogs next door. Offering you my grief about the riots, and my joy at the peony bud opening in the garden.  ****************************** I subscribe to letters from Satya Robyn. Satya is a lovely writer (both novelist and poet) as well as being a psychotherapist and a Buddhist priest who, with her husband Kaspalita Thompson, runs a Pureland Buddhist temple in Malvern, Worcestershire, England. As some of you will recall my mentioning a few times, she created a form of mindful writing which she calls small stones (which could be either prose or verse) and in January 2011 invited people all over the world to join her in writing them daily, posting them to our blogs, and sharing the links with each other via a facebook group. A delightful thing to do! I've continued the practice on and off ever since. I do it because I like it. Also, on the rare occasions I get stuck for something to write, I can look around and find a small stone. She and her husband have also offered various online courses over the years, all involving writing. I've done a few, and always loved them and got profound re-energising from them. The one she's come up with now is in perfect timing for me, just when I needed something like this. Furthermore it's free, and – being essentially spontaneous – takes hardly any time at all from each day.  I'm doing it! You can either just go ahead with it on the basis of what she says in this letter or, via the link included, you can sign up for daily emails – brief, and offering gentle guidance as to what you might focus on each day. Personally, I always so enjoy anything she writes that I choose to get the emails. The course goes for four weeks, ideally fitting neatly into June. Yes, this is a bit late to let you know. (She only put it together quite recently.) But it's fine to start late. Because of time difference, I get her emails in the evening instead of the morning, so even though I began on June 1st, I am always a day late implementing her specific suggestions and will end up with one 'earthello' (as she calls them) extra. That's OK too. This practice is meant to empower us, not hang us up with logistics. (And there's no rule against continuing on forever if you so desire.) If you take this on, you might like to share a few in our Writers' Pantry from time to time. Or you might rather keep them as private journalling.  If you do wish to share, please wait until a convenient Sunday. Putting links in the comments here and now doesn't really work. Wild Fridays are intended as your input time, hopefully inspirational but not meant as immediate prompts, so a Mister Linky is not included. You can try things at once and share later; or you can mull something over, play around with it at your leisure ... or simply take it in and absorb it. I've been sharing my earthellos on Instagram. People say they find them calming to read. That's lovely! I think Satya's intention is that they might be calming to write. I find it so. Material shared here is presented for study and review. Poems, photos, and other writings and images remain the property of the copyright owners, usually the authors. 'Letters from Satya' images and text © Satya Robyn 2020.