AK's Column: National Poetry Month and mental health reflections
The simple things in life are a lot of work these days. Surrendering to economic challenges, serious illnesses, quit culture, family problems and the like can create unrest on a daily basis. What gives us strength to continue when we are exhausted with the world around us? Poetry has lifted me out of tough times since childhood. It was the “free” gift I could take anywhere. Like hymns and spirituals, I could turn to poems when I needed to purge my soul, relax my mind and acknowledge my emotions.
In the past few years, I returned to breathing through the verses I scribe - it is how I inspire healing from my pain and suffering on my inner strength. It’s not something to force, but I wanted to offer it to those like me who are still grieving the year that should have been. When it flows, it flows, and I’ve learned to stop and embrace it. Some people draw strength and inspiration by simply reading from the experiences of others.
The words of many famous poets, both past and present, have helped and inspired people to face and overcome life's many challenges through the sentiments of their poems. Here are a few that have resonated with me over this past month:
A member of Muscogee Nation, Joy Harjo was the first Native American U.S. poet laureate. The Native American writer first felt that restorative power during a difficult time early in her life. I was first introduced to her book Mad Love and War (1990). The stories explore acts of violence against an Indian leader and attempt to deny Harjo her heritage; it delves into the difficulties indigenous peoples face in modern American society. A group of friends planned to hear her speak at a summit at Pembroke University this month. “My role as a poet is as a healer,” says Harjo. She writes: “Remember the dance language is, that life is. Remember.”
A few years ago, a friend gave me Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver’s A THOUSAND MORNINGS. I have been a fan of reading Oliver, who “opens our eyes to the nature within, to its wild and its quiet.” When things seem overwhelming in the morning, I often try to envision the world through her words. In Bone, she pens: “Understand, I am always trying to figure out what the soul is, and where hidden, and what shape.”
Over the years, I found comfort in poetry after visiting my mom through the window of her nursing home. It is heartbreaking but necessary that her nursing home closed the doors to visitors just a year before she her cancer diagnosis. We called the front desk often and asked if they would open the window and place my mom in her wheelchair so that we could extend our Easter wishes. Before leaving I read her a lesser-known poem - The Strongest Girl I Ever Knew - by Ronald Doe. It was a tribute to a wheelchair bound younger sister Kelly. “Even though she got dealt a bad hand, she remained strong and dignified throughout her life. That is why she'll always be ‘The Strongest Girl I Ever Knew.’" It reminded me of how hard a pandemic was for my mom, a true extrovert now confined to her room. She still managed to make jokes, that’s always been her coping mechanism. Since childhood, she’s fussed when I cry, when my eyes teared up last Easter, her advice was no different. So, I turned to poetry.
Washington Post critic Michael Dirda said it best in an article in early March, “In a time of crisis, poetry can help focus our fears and transform ‘noise into music.'" He writes, poetry “nourishes us, it contributes to our grieving and our healing processes, it gives focus to our loves and to our fears, allowing us to sing them, at the back of our minds, in a deliberate and disciplined transformation of noise into music, of grief into acceptance, of anger at pointless destruction into a determination to save at least something of what remains.”
In a world that is still socially distancing, poetry can offer the connection of knowing you are not the only one who feels what you feel.
Be well this National Poetry Month.
*Davidson County residents have access to the full range of National Mental Health Services. Visit https://naminwpiedmontnc.org// to see what is offered.
