Reading poetry well is a similar exercise. But poetry , both writing and reading it, asks us to stop, to sit down, to enter a quiet inner space. Lucky is the subway passenger who happens to find a poem, not an advertisement, posted to be pondered on the crowded ride to or from work. One of the goals of this course is to teach you how to find the part of you to which poetry speaks. Poetry is one way we can enhance our ability to slow down, to silence some of our myriad internal voices, to let the mud settle.
Meditation is another way.
These are long, sometimes intersecting traditions . Our Introduction to Meditation offers doorways to information about each of the great contemplative traditions. I shall not here take on the task of offering a thumbnail sketch of the histories of the world's poetry.