You Should Read More Poetry

Photo by Charles Jackson on Unsplash

William Carlos Williams wrote that “It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.” 

You would think, by now, we would have had enough of the news. Especially after the convulsions of the last several years, many of us are outright sick of that vicious cycle, and searching for something that might help us transcend it. And yet, the number of adults who read poetry is still vanishingly small. What was it that Williams thought “is found there,” in poetry, that could be so vital we might die without it?

Last year I wrote an essay called Read Literature, Not Self-Help. In it, I lamented that the people I talk to in the worlds of psychology and personal growth all seem to be reading the same dozen or so self-help and business bestsellers, and little else. 

It makes sense. We live in a time of political, economic, and existential uncertainty. All of us intuit, if only dimly, that there is no one coming to save us, that we have only ourselves to rely on if we hope to survive and perhaps, flourish. It’s no surprise that smart, growth-oriented people are looking for every advantage they can get. 

So, in a world where everyone seems to be scrambling to keep up with the marketplace by reading up on the latest innovations, diligently implementing vetted, best-in-class habits and routines, and choking down supplements recommended by their favorite podcasters, what could possibly be the advantage of reading poetry? 

If the wise people of the last 5000 years had any idea what they were talking about, perhaps it’s this: maybe there’s more to life than getting ahead. Maybe you should pause, cultivate a little awareness, and appreciate this life we’re all just briefly passing through. Maybe you should chill out.

Life is short. Death is certain. The rational thing to do would be to savor every second of this life like a rare, old French wine that you will taste only once. 

But that’s easier said than done. Economic necessity press-gangs us into working long hours to support our families. Families, too, take time, especially once children enter the stage. And now, we have digital media deliberately designed to grab our attention, hold it at gunpoint, and squeeze it for every cent that it’s worth.

Poetry, in its very lack of survival value–or, frankly, economic value–offers us an alternative to this Darwinian madness. Poetry says, channeling its gay, bearded friend Walt Whitman, “loafe with me on the grass…. loose the stop from your throat.” Pause a while, and learn to appreciate friendship, good conversation, the silences in a good conversation, nature, love, idleness. None of these contribute to economic growth, and yet, aren’t they some of the best things in life?

Like everyone else, I read poems in school. But I didn’t truly discover poetry until I was sixteen and caught in a deep depression. I was miserable in high school, and the world around me seemed bleak, shallow, and devoid of anything good, true, or beautiful. Poetry offered me a lamp in that darkness. In my sophomore world literature class, I remember gravitating toward the sensual lyrics of Sufi poets like Rumi and Hafez, as well as the plain-spoken elegance of Zen poetry. In the next years, I discovered nonconformist heroes in Thoreau and Whitman, and fell in love with the English Romantics. 

At that time, poetry gave me something to believe in, something to value. As the years went on and I kept reading, it gave me much more than that: mind-expanding thoughts, perspectives I would never otherwise have encountered, consolation in difficult times, initiation into some of life’s deepest mysteries.

I remember the first time I heard Mary Oliver’s poem “Wild Geese.” I’d recently become a father at the age of 21. While I loved my daughter, I felt trapped in an unhappy relationship with my partner and couldn’t see a way out. 

The poem’s opening lines hit my body like a truck full of bricks:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

While it was still a long time before I made a change, the poem gave me hope. It taught me one of the hardest lessons I’ve ever had to learn: that I didn’t always have to be perfect. That I couldn’t always put others’ needs before my own. That I was allowed to be human.

Reading poetry helps us cultivate soul–that reflective quality that breathes depth, meaning, and beauty into life, and which, as the psychologist James Hillman noted, has a special relationship to love and death. William Wordsworth wrote that poetry “takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” As such, it teaches us to reflect on our own emotions, experiences, and relationships from a more meditative state.

In other words, reading poetry can be a mindfulness practice. To borrow a definition from MBSR founder Jon Kabat-Zinn, it teaches us how to pay attention, on purpose, in a particular way.  Because poets, as Emily Dickinson put it, “tell the truth but tell it slant,” they show us how to look at life from an oblique angle and see things we didn’t notice before. If we are patient, reading poetry can even teach us what John Keats called negative capability–the capacity for “being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” That’s something that our ego-based, problem-solving forays into self-improvement or financial success can never do.

Today, my favorite way to read poetry is a tiny habit suggested by Keats in one of his letters. In the morning, over a cup of tea, I’ll read one or two poems from a book that I keep on the breakfast table. I like to read each poem twice, out loud if I can. Throughout the day, I often find my mind drifting to a line or image that I read that morning. Sometimes, in a flash of insight, my experiences during the day will point out something I’d missed in the poem. Other times, it’s the poem that illuminates my life, like a shaft of sunlight hitting a stained-glass window. 

If you’re keen to try reading more poetry, I highly recommend this practice. As for where to start, any of the poets I quote in this essay are accessible enough for beginners, and will handsomely reward the time you spend with them. But really, there’s no right or wrong approach. Read the poems you genuinely enjoy, and your life will be richer for it.

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This post is part of a series of essays I’m publishing on Wednesdays, in addition to my regular Monday newsletter.

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