Poetry Saves

“…when people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn’t be read in school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange and stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language—and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.” p.40

This is one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite authors, Jeanette Winterson, from her memoir (with one of the best titles ever) Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (New York: Grove Press, 2011). The book’s title comes from an admonishment her abusive, Fundamentalist Christian adoptive mother frequently gave her growing up. Jeanette was frequently locked in a coal cellar and then locked out of her house by her mother (for being “sinful and gay”) before she ran away from home permanently at age 16. In short, she had a tough life as a child. Poetry and literature saved her.

Towards the end of her memoir, Winterson writes eloquently of the complex relationship between madness and creativity. She admits that she often hears voices and realizes “…that drops me in the crazy category” but doesn’t much care. “If you believe, as I do, that the mind wants to heal itself, and that the psych seeks coherence not disintegration, then it isn’t hard to conclude that the mind will manifest whatever is necessary to work on the job.” Then she writes of the part of herself that acted out from her childhood trauma—the acting out in rage, self-harm (including suicidal ideation), social isolation, and “…sexual recklessness—not liberation.” She questions whether this madness could be the creative spirit. But she answers emphatically: “No. Creativity is on the side of health—it isn’t the thing that drives us mad; it is the capacity in us that tries to save us from madness.” pp. 170- 171.

April is National Poetry Month. Also, it is National Child Abuse Prevention Month as well as Sexual Assault Awareness Month—with this year’s theme (appropriately enough with the #MeToo movement) of Embrace Your Voice.