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Therapeutic implications of poeticconversationPhyllis Klein & Perie LongoPublished online: 20 Feb 2007.

To cite this article: Phyllis Klein & Perie Longo (2006) Therapeutic implications of poeticconversation, Journal of Poetry Therapy: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Practice, Theory, Researchand Education, 19:3, 115-125, DOI: 10.1080/08893670600887908

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Therapeutic implications of poeticconversation

Phyllis Klein & Perie Longo*

The authors experienced a serendipitous exchange of poems leading to shared examination about

poetry as dialogue. This led to designing and coleading a workshop at the National Association for

Poetry Therapy, 2005, on poetic conversation. We suggest details about the structure and content of

the workshop, and examples of poems to illustrate many different conversations. This article suggests

several ways to look at poetry as dialogue: conversation the poet engages in with him or herself,

conversations begun by the poet for the reader, poems written directly to or about someone else, between

two or more parts of the self, or as a response to another poem. We use the writing of Gregory Orr,

Jane Hirshfield, Jack Leedy, and Nick Mazza to illustrate how poetry in conversation leads to

compassion, sympathetic identification, and connection. Ultimately, we believe it is these states that

underpin the therapeutic value of poetry.

Keywords Compassion; dialogue; poetry; sympathetic identification; therapeutic

Did you ever stop to think that poetic conversation, with yourself and/or another,

might create intimacy that could make a tremendous difference in your relationships?

That is a question we asked after a serendipitous exchange of poems. Some time

later, we began a dialogue about the nature of poetry itself, which led to our decision

to colead a workshop on the subject for the annual National Association for Poetry

Therapy conference in 2005.

Much poetry is conversation the poet is having with him or herself. Other poems

are, at their roots, conversations begun by the poet for the reader. There are also poems

written directly to someone else, or about someone else specifically. In ‘‘Look Here’’ by

Pamela Alexander (1994), the poet spoke directly to us about a familiar experience:

Next time you walk by my place

in your bearcoat and mooseboots,

. . . you could say hello, you canoe-footed fur-faced

musk ox

(Alexander, 1994, p. 72)

*Corresponding author. Perie Longo, 800 Garden Street, Suite I, Santa Barbara, CA 93101, USA.

Email: perie@west.net

Journal of Poetry Therapy(September 2006), Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 115�125

ISSN 0889-3675 print # 2006 National Association for Poetry Therapy

DOI: 10.1080/08893670600887908

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Perie Longo wrote about her family in ‘‘Reunion’’

Not long ago the five of us met,

my five little peppers, mother used to say

We didn’t act surprised

to see our parents show up

in each of us now.

Leslie Ullman (1998) wrote a conversation between two parts of herself in ‘‘One

Side Of Me Writes To The Other’’:

I need to be in the weather again.

I need to go deeper this time, where no

wall or roof will hold my silence . . .

Always you have drawn me home

with candlelight and ginger tea.

The other side answers:

You go away too much.

You’re afraid of stillness . . .but when you come home . . .

when you pull from your pockets bright peridot and quartz . . .these rooms grow golden around you.

(Ullman, 1998, pp. 62�65).

Ted Kooser (2004), in his poem ‘‘That Was I’’ in Delights and Shadows , spoke to

the reader and also to the ‘‘you’’ character in the poem, a presence that is both

specific and universal. This intricate poem reminds the reader and the poet that

assumptions aren’t always accurate. An excerpt from the poem reads:

I was that older man you saw sitting . . .on a bench at the empty horseshoe courts

. . . I had noticed, of course,

that the rows of sunken horseshoe pits

with their rusty stakes grown over with grass

were like old graves, but I was not letting

my thoughts go there. Instead, I was looking

with hope to a grapevine draped over

a fence . . . knowing that I could go on.

(Kooser, 2004, p. 71)

An additional kind of dialogue poem is one that is written in response to

another’s poem. A few years ago Perie sent Phyllis a poem for Christmas about

angels. In the months following, Phyllis was struggling to cope with a very painful

situation in her family. She thought of how Perie’s angels might help, and so wrote an

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angel poem and sent a copy to Perie. They were both moved and brought closer

through that experience. These two poems, read at the start of the workshop, began a

chain reaction that seemed to magically pull the participants into the intimate circle

of our dialogue. These poems appear below.

Maybe Angels Are

mistakes

corrected,

old times resurrected, misguided love

back on course to lift the inner flute,

or just by chance, desire to see beyond

the reckoning star. The moon is ripe with hope

but don’t look there, angels hover

at elbow bend, between your toes

rows of them, wings of leaves or breeze,

silver or cellophane,

a chill that sifts right through,

possibly a voice sprung from a well

once dry, or a quick veer to avoid

a solid thing when all you want is speed.

For those who doubt, angels could be

indecision as they cast

a quick glance, wondering

is this time? Who?

Notice when they arrive

how their wings vary,

some traditional*fully feathered

like seagull or eagle*others blossomed

like heather. And today there was a dash

around me so quick as I passed a tree, I was sure

hers were battery-operated.

There are those with only goosebumps

not always on the back,

and some no wings at all,

just scratched knees

trying to get off the ground.

Perie Longo

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Phyllis responded:

Maybe angels

were with me the day

my sister and husband were run down

on the road in New York, guided my

thoughts to what it would feel like to get hit

as I crossed the street in San Francisco.

Surely angels, familiar with misfortune

and emergency rooms,

watched as my sister and

her husband, almost as big as a small

bear, stepped off the curb, his size what saved them.

Accident angels hovered, caressed,

willed them to survive. Saw the ambulance come.

Did friendship angels, familiar with compassion

and coincidence,

know I wouldn’t be told for a week?

Did they bring me to the sangha1 and the teacher who spoke

about bearing unbearable pain?

Did they guide my friend, the one I needed most,

to answer the phone on his way out the door?

Perhaps they remember what it was like to walk,

have shoulders without wings.

Do they know when humans will

enter the next life, and when the unopened tulips

on my table will bloom, die, resurrect?

After the group participants discussed their emotional reactions to the poems

and the implications the poems had in their own lives, they were asked to form dyads

and interview each other for 5 minutes without taking notes*just listening. They

were given a few questions to answer:

When did you start writing poetry?

What drew you to poetry therapy?

What has been one of the best times in your life? Why?

What was one of the most transformative moments in your life?

What was one of the worst things that happened to you?

What makes you laugh or feel happiness?

They were further instructed to add any questions that seemed to evolve from

the interview. Another way to implement this exercise is to have each pair ask any

questions of each other, back and forth, giving 10 minutes for the process. After the

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interviews, they were to write a poem to or about the person they interviewed, and

feel free to read between the lines of what was spoken. Following are excerpts from

poems that were written in the dyads.

Serendipity at a Poetry Therapy Workshop

For Norma Leedy

There must have been an angel

sitting here between us

waiting for our pens

to meet

over husbands’

slipping

minds.

Norma and Esther

writing down their stories,

of Norma’s Jack:

forty-five years with patients,

patients and poetry.

Esther’s Abe:

forty-five years of study

and peering

through a microscope:

oncology

cells

after oncology

cells

of stunning destruction.

Two doctors’ wives

reeling.

Dear Alzheimer’s,

why

did you pick

our sheltered

lives

to visit?

(Esther Altshul Helfgott)

To Esther

Did you know it was the angels

that directed me to sit here

next to you?

Is it possible that you and I are both shadows of each other?

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We live two coasts apart and yet share so much.

(Norma Leedy)

To Gina

She believes metaphors are the way, images are the key;

metaphor no mere device . . . helps

carry your meaning from the shadowy places,

brick by brick, out into the sun.

(Mary Caprio)

For Mary

In the desert of Tennessee

some flowers are just blooming.

A gardener with a vision . . .

has donned her gloves,

fertilized the soil,

she witnesses the fruit

of her labor, their labor,

And it is good.

(Gina Campbell)

Patricia’s Song

. . . Her gift to me today

. . . a deeper knowing . . .

to be nurtured, brought to life

Her awakening from deep sleep, her coma

gave birth to this epiphany

that her life is a glorious litany.

(Magali Garcia)

Maggie’s story begins . . .

Rhyming was her love . . .

she saw a sign*‘‘All those attending the National Association of Poetry

Therapy (NAPT) conference, enter here.’’

. . . Maggie set a new goal for herself . . .

went to the ocean

married herself . . .

Imagine meeting a total stranger in this workshop,

. . . one of six scheduled for this time period.

(Patricia Grant)

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Two months later Perie received an invitation to speak about poetry for healing

at the University of Kuwait from associate professor Haifa Al Sanousi, who wanted to

start a program called ‘‘Writing for Your Health.’’ Together with the invitation came

some of Haifa’s own poems, including a poem with the question, ‘‘Can anyone hear

my voice?’’ Perie was deeply affected, accepted the invitation to come to Kuwait,

responding with a poem, ‘‘I Hear Your Voice’’. Here are excerpts from their poems:

It Is Not Fair!

I think I need to unveil the minds

which refuse to listen to me.

. . . I am here sitting on the top of the mountain,

flying with the singing birds and the colorful butterflies,

printing a big and shining smile on my face.

. . . Will they notice that I am sitting on the top of the mountain?

Can anyone hear my voice? enjoy my song? . . .

Will anyone dare to open the curtains of my world?

I am waiting . . . waiting . . . waiting

(Haifa Al Sanousi, Kuwait)

Perie responded in part:

I Hear Your Voice

For Haifa Al Sanousi

In my garden, a white butterfly weaves

between the leaves, your voice

from the other side of the world

loud and clear as birds perched above.

Two women from two different cultures united

with similar quest and questions: to unveil

the minds who refuse to hear

What can we do?

Yesterday, driving south through fog,

I thought it must be made of whale breath,

storm surge, soul skim, how those who part

this world come visit*that we might know the truth

of silence. There is little distance between

one country and the next, this life or that,

my poem or yours, dear poet, your voice freed,

flown into my garden. Soon I will fly to yours.

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One month later, Perie used these dialogue poems between Haifa and herself to

begin another workshop on poetic conversation. Two poems evolved from this

experience, from which excerpt are given below.

For Another Mother, Always Questioning

For Georgette

I give you two paddles . . .one is named Deep Love

the other Deep Conversation.

I give you a boat . . .

Into this boat you will place

your precious children

they will take up the paddles . . .then navigate the forked river

that separates their country.

They will steer this sturdy boat

they’ve named Our Life . . .

And always they will be safe

holding tightly to Deep Love

rowing strong with Deep Conversation

setting foot on solid land

because of you.

(Nancy G. Shapiro)

Water and Bloom

For Nancy Shapiro

A mother travels

from one country

to another.

Her son follows.

Exactly how far

he cannot say.

Even still he recalls

pine trees yielding

to agaves and sapotes . . .

Even now he can taste

the warm churros

and chocolate caliente . . .

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Think of a boat

navigating a river.

How much belief

does it take to keep

a child afloat?

The boat navigates

on love, you say.

The perils vary

yet the water remains

the same.

Think of the unseen gifts

contained in a word or

in an embrace,

of the purple bougainvillea

bursting into bloom.

(Georgette M. James)

Gregory Orr (2002), in his book Poetry As Survival , wrote about ‘‘The Two

Survivals’’*survival of the poet, in that the poet struggles to engage with disorder to

write a poem, and in the act of writing, ‘‘bring order to disorder.’’ The other survival

is that of the reader, who connects with poems that ‘‘enter deeply into’’ him or her,

leading to ‘‘sympathetic identification of reader with writer’’ (pp. 83�84). This kind

of connection can be heightened with direct dialogue because the reader and writer

cross back and forth from one role to the other, deepening the possibility for empathy

and sympathetic identification.

To illustrate this concept, we return to the two poems that we wrote about

angels. Perie wrote her poem when her daughter was going through a very difficult

period. For Perie, the whole poem is for her daughter whose nickname, when a

toddler, was ‘‘angel-pie.’’ The last three lines of the poem,

and some no wings at all,

just scratched knees

trying to get off the ground

are a message to encourage and empower her daughter, and more broadly for anyone

who is feeling discouraged, traumatized, or troubled. When Phyllis received this

poem from Perie and the poem deeply entered into her, she took the theme of angels,

and wrote her own family story about terrible pain and hope. The poems transcend

the theme of angels because there is an even deeper content here*the theme of

ordinary people becoming heroes, and the rebirth and reconciliation that can come

from tragedy. Also, as is often the case with poetry, there is an unconscious

connection as both authors write about family, although in Perie’s poem this is not

stated directly.

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In the first chapter of Jane Hirshfield’s (1998) book Nine Gates: Entering the

Mind of Poetry, ‘‘Poetry and the Mind of Concentration,’’ Hirshfield looked at the

concentrations of music, rhetoric, image, emotion, story, and voice in poetry. First

focusing on music, she wrote:

The musical qualities of verse create their own concentration . . . But a

poem’s interweavings of sound do something else as well: they signal the

way every part of a poem affirms its connection with all the rest, each

element speaking to and with every other. A glittering, multifaceted

expression of interconnection is among poetry’s central gifts. (p. 8)

She continued to speak about how poetry connects people in the present and

across time:

Saying a poem aloud, or reading it silently if we do so with our full

attention, our bodies as well as our minds enter the rhythms present at that

poem’s conception. We breathe as the author breathed, we move our

tongue and teeth and throat in the ways they moved in the poem’s first

making. There is a startling intimacy to this. Some echo of a writer’s

physical experience comes into us when we read her poem . . . (p. 8)

Hirshfield is talking about the same empathic connection as Orr, adding first

how the music of a poem connects the poem to itself and, secondly, how the same

poem connects the author to the reader.

It is these connections that led us to focus on the many dialogues present in all

poetry. Therapeutic implications are both implicit and explicit. In his book, Poetry as

Healer , Jack Leedy (1985) stated: ‘‘Depressed patients . . . are helped by poems sad

and gloomy in tone yet having lines or stanzas that reflect hope and optimism

especially toward their conclusion’’ (p. 82). He stated that ‘‘by reading studying,

memorizing, reciting, or creating this kind of poem’’ depressed people will feel

connected to others in ways that reduce isolation and shame, and that when tears are

shed over sad poems, ‘‘the poem symbolically becomes an understanding someone’’

to share despair with (p. 82). Later, he added:

A poem has been described as the shortest emotional distance between two

points, the points representing the writer and the reader. This may explain

why communication through poetry is established so readily and why

patients themselves are moved so frequently to attempt their own

composition of poems. (p. 85)

Nicholas Mazza (1999) stated about group therapy: ‘‘The use of a preexisting

poem’’ allows members ‘‘to talk about feelings in a nonthreatening manner’’ (p. 49).

We would like to add that, many times, participants in a group fear disclosing their

personal and often long-lasting issues in front of a whole group, but when they work

in a dyad, self-disclosure becomes less risky. As partners listen to each other, they

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become intensely focused on what they are saying, knowing they are going to write a

poem to or about their partner.

In our workshops, it was also encouraged that, after the partners read each other

their poems, they might comment on the correctness of the information related in the

poem, if the partner understood them, and if feelings assumed between the words

had significance. In each instance, there was remarkable delight expressed in how

much the partner had truly seen and understood them in a way often not

experienced, and even provided insight. They became mirrors for each other, each

reflecting light held in the darkness within. When seen so clearly, each participant

might even feel empowered for having succeeded in clearly communicating a secret.

This could be, perhaps, a feeling of shame. Having this or another difficult feeling so

openly received and turned into a productive and beautiful form as a poem, each

feels validated and valued.

When Mary Oliver (2004) wrote in her poem ‘‘Wild Geese’’: ‘‘Tell me about

despair, yours, and I will tell you mine’’ (p. 110), she is addressing the intimate

invitation to poetry and conversation we all long for. We would like to extend and

broaden this invitation to you, the readers of this article. Find a poem someone has

written and write a response. Write a poem to someone in your family, a friend, pet, a

person who is no longer alive, or someone of utmost importance to you*yourself!

Exchange responsive poems, like the ones here, with another poet. Then, if you are

so moved, please send us your poems and tell us your experience, adding to an ever

widening and endless circle of community and connection.

Note

[1] sangha *a Buddhist congregation.

References

Alexander, P. (1994). Look here. Atlantic Monthly 273 (6), 72.

Hirshfield, J. (1998). Poetry and the mind of concentration. In Nine gates: Entering the mind of poetry

(p. 8) New York: Harper Collins Publishers.

Kooser, T. (2004). Delights and shadows (p. 7). Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press. (Excerpt from

that was I reprinted by permission of Ted Kooser.)

Leedy, J. (1985). Poetry as healer: Mending the troubled mind . New York: Vanguard Press.

Mazza, N. (1999). Poetry therapy: Interface of the arts and psychology. Boca Raton: CRC Press.

Oliver, M. (2004). New and selected works . Boston: Beacon Press.

Orr, G. (2002). Poetry as survival . Athens: University of Georgia Press.

Ullman, L. (1998). Slow working through sand . Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. (Excerpt reprinted by

permission of Leslie Ullman.)

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