The Power of a Poem

I am a firm believer in the power of poetry. Not because I can write it, but because it takes time to read it. In fact, the reality is that when you sit with a poem long enough it begins to read you. Several years ago as a gift for my kids I compiled a book of poems that had shaped me along with some comments about them. In the introduction I wrote…

The reason I like poems is that you don’t master them.  They always tell you different things as you return to sit with them.  The Enlightenment really hurt us in many ways.  We began to see everything as scientific.  Information became something that we could pursue to control, to master, and to gain knowledge.  So we started to read that way, seeking to master truth instead of entering into relationship with it.  It shaped how we read the Bible, coming to the text looking for a verse that means something to us.  We want to take the truth that is there and control it, use it for something beneficial.  But that is not the way truth works.  Truth is a relational concept.  It’s something that you live with.  That’s why Jesus said, “I am the Truth” instead of "I will tell you the Truth.”  Poems call us back to that different, more relational experience with the truth.   It’s a skill that I fear our world is losing, especially with the distractions of technology.  You can waste an entire day with something and not experience it, not relate to it.  You just scroll through it.  For me, poetry, at least good poetry, is the anti-venom for that poison.  It’s a way to move past just “scrolling” to thinking.  I would go even one step further.  Thinking takes us back to seeing, but really seeing, beyond the surface of things to their depth.  To look at those deep things takes time.  Time lived in relationship with truth. 

Poems slow down our mental cadence just enough to force us to think about the words we are reading. They seem to sneak in behind our defences of self-preservation and challenge us to see the way a truth might impact us.

That’s why in this time of media sound bites flying between “Black Lives Matter” and “I am not a racist!” I think a good poem is what we need. And William Stafford has written something that speaks directly to the moment we are living in right now. So take a spin through this poem. Then pull up your chair and sit with it for a while. Read it out loud, slowly, multiple times. Let it peel back the layers and expose what the truth might be speaking to you, no matter where you fall in the racial tensions of North America at the moment.

A Ritual to Read to Each Other

By: William Stafford

If you don't know the kind of person I am

and I don't know the kind of person you are

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world

and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,

a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break

sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood

storming out to play through the broken dike.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,

but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,

a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should consider—

lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.