The Therapeutic Value of Poetry for Students and Readers

From poetry therapy's emergence as a field in the late 1960s, its practitioners have applied poetry to psychotherapy and used it in therapeutic practice.1 I am proposing the application of therapy to the way we understand and teach poetry. I am interested in exploring the interface between poetry, therapy, and pedagogy for the purpose of aiding in student development and in positive social transformation. I use the term "therapy" in a very broad sense here. Psychoanalyzing students or doing specific problem focused, individualized therapy with students would not be feasible or practical in the classroom and would bring with it a number of ethical concerns. Yet, reading poems and works of literature, or experiencing various art forms in general, and responding to them, does have therapeutic value that teachers can more effectively maximize in the classroom. While our goals in academia will not coincide completely with those of therapists, and while we can only rarely, if ever, offer the kind of individual attention that therapists can offer their clients, we do share a belief in the value of literary works for people and for society as a whole. The work of poetry therapists, along with psychoanalytic theorists, offers important insights into the power of poetic language for the reader, which could prove useful to teachers and scholars of literature. Though therapy has different goals than literary studies, if we can integrate these goals of therapy with our goals as writers and teachers, we can make literary studies more beneficial to our students. The insights of poetry therapists can help us maximize the potentially beneficial dynamics of the relationship between reader and text. Reading poetry allows us to explore emotional states more deeply, which helps us to become more self-aware and more in-tune with our experiences. Reading poetry also allows us to get outside of ourselves and empathize with others, which is especially valuable for us as social beings. At times, poetry can help us cope with problems or negative emotions by offering us recognition and allowing for transcendence. Poetry can also stimulate our imaginations and lead us to become more creative, proactive people. This approach to poetry necessarily involves a shift from the traditional focus on the meaning of a text toward a focus on the experience of a text. This shift in focus offers us a way to make the most of poetry and its potential benefits. The difficulty and frequent ambiguity of poetry often becomes a major source of frustration and anxiety, particularly when students have been taught to focus on the goal of locating a specific meaning. This is often followed by an implementation of defense mechanisms that attack or dismiss the text. We must learn to put meaning aside as secondary, and focus instead on the immediate experience of a poem. This, after all, is where we can locate the unique power of a poetic text. This does not give one a license to find absolutely any meaning whatsoever in any given text. Our experience of a poem must always remain grounded in its language. But the psychological states this language gives rise to in us should provide our focus. As we come to understand how the language of a poem struggles to achieve some kind of meaning for us through various means, our experience of the poem is enhanced. This experience can even develop or alter as we gain deeper understanding, or as we continue to have new experiences. What keeps a poem alive, so that we return to it again and again, is our ability to experience it differently, perhaps more deeply, at different moments. As fluid subjects, our experience of everything continually changes. Because of its relative ambiguity, poetic language can change with us, show us how we change, and, most importantly, help to bring about change. We are not rigid subjects and poems are not rigid texts. We should not treat ourselves or our texts as such. We should emphasize the exploration of the experience of a poetic text on a more individual level, since this will prove valuable in aiding students in personal development and mental well-being with all of their social benefits. …