POEM POWER
Ever since people started talking to one another, they’ve explored the power of words. The power of LOGOS (the Word) has been the fundamental foundation for building a religion, a culture, a movement, a life.
Words can move you. Words can move other people. That’s probably why everybody talks so much.
A MOST EFFECTIVE PUNISHMENT
Remember the Biblical Tower of Babel? According to the story, the people on earth got together and decided to build this great tower that would reach into Heaven itself. They figured they could be like little gods if they did that.
They were planning to invade and trespass into God-country. The Big Guy got mad that they even dared to make that attempt.
All of a sudden, there was a major obstacle to collaboration and cooperation. You can’t work together if you don’t understand what the other person is saying.
The project was abandoned.
Of course, that also meant that folks had a harder time just living together peacefully, but that’s another story….
DISTILLING THE WORDS
Poems are an especially powerful form of word-use. Poets distill their thoughts down to their essence, throwing away all the parts that interfere with their dance with the words.
Poems are like the essential oils of the Word World. It takes an incredible number of rose petals to make an essential oil. Imagine. It takes 10,000 POUNDS of petals to make one pound of rose oil. Each little 5mL bottle contains the essence of 105 pounds of petals.
Have you ever tried opening one of those teeny bottles of essential rose oil? Wow! One sniff and your nose transports you into the best enclosed rose garden there ever was.
POEMS AS A BUSINESS TOOL
In this 2013 TEDxMarin video, “The Power of Poetry”, leadership coach and teacher Dale Biron, who combines poetry with martial arts, leadership, and life-strategy, in his speaking, coaching and workshop sessions for business conferences, organizational retreats and university classes, talks about how great poems are like powerful “apps” for the mind.
Biron says poems can be “good stories with the boring parts removed.” He believes in the power of poems to get you to a life worth living.
POEMS IN MAXIMUM PRISON
Touring spoken word poet Phil Kaye has won many awards in his career so far. He’s currently a co-director of Project V.O.I.C.E. (Vocal Outreach Into Creative Expression).
The Project, it says here, is “a national movement that celebrates youth self-expression through Spoken Word Poetry.” They aspire to encourage young people to use Spoken Word Poetry as a tool “to explore and better understand their culture, their society, and ultimately themselves.”
When Kaye was still a student at Brown University, he participated in and eventually became the coordinator for the college’s S.P.A.C.E. (Space in Prisons for the Arts and Creative Expression) prison initiative program.
The University students, unpaid volunteers all, offer a variety of weekly art workshops at the Rhode Island Adult Correction Institutions (ACI). Phil did workshops about spoken poetry.
(S.P.A.C.E. also facilitates workshops in the Providence Center, a residential recovery service provider located on the campus of the ACI.)
Kaye developed a keen appreciation for the power of poems during the time he taught weekly poetry workshops in maximum-security prisons. In this TEDxFoggy Bottom video, “Poetry in Maximum Security Prison,” he talks about that time in his life and how it has influenced his life-direction.
Kaye’s journey has led him to venues all over the world from the Lincoln Center in New York City to the Malthouse Theater in Melbourne Australia. His work has been viewed online over five million times and has been featured in media outlets ranging from National Public Radio to Al Jazeera America and Upworthy.com.
In 2011, Kaye published a well-received book of his poetry, A LIGHT BULB SYMPHONY.
One of Kaye’s favorite life high-points was being asked to perform alongside His Holiness The 14th Dalai Lama during the beloved teacher’s 80th birthday celebration at the 2015 Global Compassion Summit conference in Anaheim.
FINAL THOUGHTS
In my own life, poems have been my way to get back to clarity about a life-situation or about my own self. Writing down and recording all the moving parts is like taking a step back from them so I can get a better handle on the whole mish-mash of chaos and confusion.
Sometimes, a hole opens up in the clouds and a light shines through. Sometimes not.
It’s all process….
Here’s a poem:
UNPLAYFUL WORDS
Nothing comes together.
This poem is not going well.
The words keep turning pale.
They fade, they float away.
They stumble around looking confused.
Hmmm.
I let loose my Sergeant Major
Who growls at these clueless bo-bo recruits.
They keep stacking themselves this way, that way.
They keep falling over, all in a heap.
A horrible mess.
These words have forgotten how to weave, it seems.
They’ve lost the knack of bending and turning themselves
Into a shapeliness that lightly dances.
All they’re doing now is tripping all over themselves,
Faltering and flailing wildly.
Maybe they’ve contracted some runical laxness…
A touch of lyrical amnesia, perhaps,
Or maybe some versical repression.
They are limp, they are flawed.
They are a bunch of lazy bums!
Maybe I’ve stumbled upon a stash of leftover bits —
Just coagulated lumps of airhead thoughts,
Neither highly expressive nor particularly rhymical.
A deadly dud-ness.
(Sigh!)
Ah well…maybe they just need to rest.
See ya later, guys.
I’m gone….
by Netta Kanoho
Header photo credit: “garden poem” by Julie Gibbons via Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0]
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