“Over the years teaching creative writing workshops and poetry in literature classes, I used to require students to memorize a poem a week, 14 lines minimum, of their own choice, because someday they might find themselves in hospital, in jail, in the army, in a homeless shelter, depressed, or just sleepless, and it would be really good if they could have some poems in storage to call on. Well, they didn’t think they could do this but they could, and what they brought us was always wonderful. Wonderful because they chose it.
In a sense, any poem one loves is a healing poem. It is here for you when you need it. And always I believe what happens is that through a poem we may attain a moment of wholeness. Flesh and spirit may merge for an instant, self and other, self and world may acknowledge their unity. Language and the reality that language can only gesture at and never touch–sometimes it can touch. Be touched. The unspeakable can be spoken.”
Alicia Ostriker, from “Poetry and Healing: Some Moments of Wholeness,” The American Poetry Review (vol. 47, no. 2, March/April 2018)
