“come celebrate/with me that everyday/something has tried to kill me/and has failed.” Lucille Clifton, “won’t you celebrate with me” from Book of Light (Copper Canyon Press, 1993).
Poetry heals. Is it any surprise that at times of crisis, illness, grief—or joy and celebration—we turn to poetry to help express what straight word prose cannot?
I have been reminded of this over the past week while simultaneously holding the joy of a family milestone birthday with the sudden serious illness of a dear friend. I have been thrown into the arms of poetry.
Poetry heals. Our first responders are poets, as are artists of all kinds. Cherish our poets and artists. Their work is essential for our existence, for our survival. Listen up you curmudgeonly naysayers who proclaim that poet laureates of our cities, states, and nations are a waste of taxpayer dollars—that the money would be better spent on sweeping away our human waste, on filling the potholes in our roads. You too—but perhaps too late—will be thrown into the arms of poetry.
“There are times when people have experiences that don’t fit neatly into a storyline, a narrative of what happened. Especially within the context of trauma, suffering, and oppression, our ability to arrange bits together into a coherent narrative is overwhelmed. Yet these experiences, beyond the reach of narrative, can be formulated, conveyed, and communicated through metaphor, poetry, art, photography, and gesture.” (From my essay, “Witness: On Telling” in Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, Fall 2017.)
I end this, as I began, with the words of Lucille Clifton. Here is a powerful video recording of her talking about and then reading her poem, “The Killing of the Trees.” In her opening statement, she says, “There seems to be very little reverence for life. I think there is a thing which bothers me about people not having reverence for life that doesn’t look like themselves. And I think that is a great mistake.” As a gifted poet, Clifton can “see it all with that one good eye.”
JOSEPHINE ENSIGN 