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How to Use Poetry to Guide Your Focus
Using poems to get into or reverse specific mindsets.
Posted April 30, 2012
How about trying something different to enhance you focus? Imagine having your iPod or cell phone loaded up with poems read by your favorite authors and capable of guiding you into your most balanced mindset wherever you go, at the push of a button. This post will discuss why and how you can do just that.
The classical music of literary arts
Historically, poetry has been treated as the classical music of literary arts. Why poetry? Other forms of literature like poetry also have the capacity to extend influence over you. But poetry has some special elements that make it a powerful prescription for “quick” and “lasting” mind-body effects. For immediate fixes, a poem can function as a pick-me-up, relaxer, mood shifter…and much more. For the long-term and depending on the poem, like certain music, chants, and incantations, poems can have real staying power over what and how you think, feel, and do.
Train your mind
Like music, you can use poems to train your mind into or out of specific mindsets. A poem’s rhythms and other repeated patterns, sounds (consonance, assonance, rhymes), tempo, visuals (images and metaphors) and other sensory detail, harmony, and dissonance allow it to extend its influence over your mind in many of the same ways as music.
A poem is (usually) short and complete
Because many poems are short, like a song, you can listen to a piece repeatedly, if needed, in order to produce your desired effect (e.g. higher alertness, joyfulness). But poems aren’t just smaller versions of a piece of writing that would like to be longer. They are complete unto themselves. They are, in effect, condensed language frozen into a set frame for maximum output. Their greater energy output increases their potential communication and impact. The poet and langage theorist Charles Olson referred to this structure as unique and significant to the genre. This is because this tight little package of words is capable, according to Olson (and many others), of “transferring” the entirety of a specific slice of personal experience straight into another person, making the experience, now, fully the reader’s (or listener’s), and giving the reader “full access" to whatever the writer just felt, thought, did. In this model, audiences become a participant in where that entire “download” of experience may lead. The process emphasizes the reader's role in taking meaning from the poem.
When a poem works for you
When a poem works for you, it is possible (I think desirable even) for you to, ironically in a sense, share in the initial experience, and then, perhaps “walk away” with more than the writer may have. Imagine this: Say you could place someone into a virtual reality of an experience capable of making that person feel everything as you did in that experience. The job of the poem, says Olson, is to create that kind of virtual reality with words. Once having experienced the poet’s reality, readers can loop the experience (and its ability to inform them and others) into their own personal environment. The mythologist Joseph Campbell referred to this looping or “feedback,” as he called it, in such a way: the writer-artist creates; a myth takes flight, the experience streams into the minds of many, and then it becomes a shared mind. It eventually returns to the world of writers-artists who loop it back around (in response) again. Art grows. Individuals grow. People grow. A larger consciousness grows. Each reflects and contributes to the transformation of the other.
Breaking through
A poem is what you would say if you only could, said poet Allen Ginsberg. It is the articulation of what otherwise would remain for and among individuals as unspeakable. On the other hand, much has been written on the idea that language becomes desensitized and as a result so do its users. Desensitized language then leads to breakdowns in communication and to a general deterioration of attention, focus, personal and interpersonal development. Some have gone so far as to say that language has become desensitized to the point to where it is “dead.”
When a poem is successful, however, says Pulitzer winning poet Galway Kinnell, it “breaks through some moral sound barrier.” It breaks through politics, gender, religion, culture, all “dividers.”It enters the place of pure human experience. When this happens, the poem’s core experience is capable of being about anything - anything. So the right poem could theoretically work magic for you in multiple situations you’d like to correct or enhance.
A colleague of mine recently said given the right time, environment and personal conditions, you can be in a state of “almost” anything: almost sad, almost joyful, almost focused, almost…
So now imagine having something in your pocket you can use to break through (almost) anything. Or revive from or advance you from “almost somewhere” to right where you want to be.
Start today
Make your own poetry playlist. The first step is to find a poem you like a lot and become sensitive to how the piece makes you feel—and when—as you will probably discover that this depends on different variables: how you are feeling (or almost feeling) at the moment, your environment, your schedule, where you are, what time it is and so on. Let’s say you find a piece that feels right when you are feeling stressed at the end of a long day.
The next step is to search legitimate sources for a CD, DVD, audio or visual download of your special poem as read by its author. Then purchase a version you like best (where there are no copyright infractions) and load it onto your iPod, MP3 or cell phone so you have it next time you need it. Note: Some recordings of copyright free classic poems can be found on various poetry websites free of charge.
You can also try making playlists of readings of your favorite poems and even organize them to play in a certain order, for a better effect. Another option is to label playlists—e.g. “Morning Poems,” “Almost Depressed,” “Joyful,” “Elevate Attention,” “Calming…” and play them regularly to get you into a mood, out of a mood, or to heighten the mood. Use your playlists for specific situations—e.g. coming home from work etc. Try to play before and after targeted situations to send your mind the message that this is the mindset you want next time you enter that same environment.
Whether you already have a favorite poet or poem or just want to start looking, you can begin today. Enjoy.
