The Power of Poetry

This article is copied from here.

There are those who are born with the gift for crafting words with power as part of their earthly mission providing great inspiration for our minds and our souls. Their works of art come down to us through history and their names are well known. Then there are those of us who, when our paths encounter immense pain, loss, or joy, find no greater comfort than attempting to put our words into verse. Some of these words may become known to a few others, while some remain locked in the pages of our personal journals. Yet they all have the power to heal and help us to grow.

Molly Harrower, author of “The Therapy of Poetry,” wrote, “Poetry is ‘therapy’ and is part and parcel of normal development…. Long before there were therapists there were poets and from time immemorial man has struggled to cope with his inevitable inner turmoil. One way of so coping has been the ballad, the song, the poem. Once crystallized into words, all-engulfing feelings become manageable, and once challenged into explicitness, the burden of the incommunicable becomes less heavy. The very act of creating is a self-sustaining experience, and in the poetic moment the self becomes both the ministering ‘therapist’ and the comforted ‘patient.’”