Poetry can be a depth experience
Posted: Dec. 06, 2006
By Michael Hickey
Poetry can be defined as an attempt to try to understand the world in spiritual terms through literary composition. It allows the writer and the reader of poetry to communicate on personal and universal levels. A poem can point to a reality beyond itself and beyond the words it contains. The poem may not exactly represent reality, but is usually created in a language that is intended to convey meaning. As an art form, poetry does what all art does, and that is to represent something of and to the world.
Any poem stands on its own merit and is self-defining. The words of a poem cannot be put into a test tube where a particular reaction by the reader can be predicted each time, like you can do with chemistry, nor is it like a recipe where the words are the food ingredients. On the other hand, poetry doesn't operate in a vacuum either; there are certain literary techniques which can enable the poet to possess the ability to touch others who read the poem at the deepest level of their humanity.
Because poetry can be a depth experience, it has the potential to touch, evoke, arouse, and move some of its reader's deepest feelings and emotions. Poetry can stir the soul. Not everyone will have the same depth experience in reading every poem, but when a particular poem resonates with a reader at the deepest levels of their humanity, something spiritual happens, and a depth experience occurs. The reader's mind and heart are opened in both conscious and unconscious ways. The poem is then seen through the eyes of the soul. The same poem that is cherished, read, and reread by one individual may appear not understandable, useless, and not resonate or move another at all; poetry is like that.
Furthermore, the words of certain poems have the ability to touch some individuals at their very depths in a way that the words of prose simply cannot. This is because the poem is written in a language that conveys more than logic, thought, and reason and goes beyond the words to speak from deep to deep in the language of life experience; this makes poetry a wisdom language. Poetry has a way of speaking to an individual through words which were heretofore inexpressible. When one is moved by a poem at the deepest level of humanity, the transition is often one where the reader is moved within from a point of having read the words of the poem, to a silence within their very depths that lies beyond words, thoughts, feelings, or emotions.
What follows is a short poem. I do not say that the poem will resonate within the depths of your humanity; that would be the height of pride and arrogance. I can only say I wrote it, in part, from my depths. I hope you enjoy it.
Slaying the great
sea dragon
By Michael Hickey
You never see him on the
surface
Only at deepest of the deep
His one and only purpose
Is the life he wants to keep
Falseself is his name
He's fully self sufficient
Worship him - he's tame
His pride; eternally
deficient
He'll not allow me
Prayerfully to seek
Or open inner eye to see
God is humble and is meek
I turn away - he chases
He's relentless in pursuit
Masked with many faces
Even hiding at my root
I can find my self at center
Beyond dragon's bounded
reach
There's a place he cannot
enter
For that would cause a
breach
Christ leads the way
To my victory at sea
I claim that word today
"Love God; neighbor
as me"
To yield on my sea-journey
Allows Falseself to live on
I can slay him by my dying
Trueself would then be born
(Michael Hickey is a local writer and poet who lives in Pelican Bay and Swampscott, Mass. His new book, "Get Wisdom," is recently published by Xlibris Div. Random House Publishing and is available at 1-888-795-4274 ext. 822 or at www.xlibris.com. If you have feedback or have a poem you have written and would like it considered for publication in this column, you may e-mail him at MikeHic@Nii.net.)
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