An invitation to be present, to make shared meaning, and to get moving

Swansea, Wales

I understand that most people who read this blog don't read poetry. It's foreign to most of you, in the way that plants that grow on the other side of the planet are foreign. It's so far outside your awareness as to seem irrelevant to your lives. But when it's outside my awareness for too long, I get antsy.  Poetry helps me settle into all of myself. Maybe if you give it another chance, it can help you, too.

Here's why I think "more poetry is needed":
  1. Poetry grounds meaning in the senses. It uses sight and sound not just as containers for meaning, but as part of how meaning is made. In poetry, words point you toward lived experience, rhythms get under your skin, and the way the words  look on the page changes how you hear them and what you imagine when you do. It's as if the function of poetry is to say "There is no meaning outside the way you live your life. Presence is what counts."
  2. Poetry only makes sense when the reader and the writer cooperate. When a poet chooses a very few words to hold a very complex meaning, she does it expecting that the reader will fill in the spaces with her own experience of the world. We need more invitations to work together and fewer explanations that keep us in our own seats.
  3. Poetry moves through rhythm. Its relentless movement pulls us from one word to the next and reminds us that meaning is supposed to make stuff happen.
I think that life is complicated. We need focus and perspective and movement to get through it. More poetry is needed.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The hypnotic contract

Under what conditions would you allow someone else to tell you what to think?   If you have watched a stage hypnotist, you have seen what looks like one person exercising remarkable control over the thoughts and actions of another. It is fascinating, in part, because we have all seen it happen in real life. Suddenly someone we know seems to be relying on someone else to do the thinking.  Even if the influence is good, it is a little frightening. The secret is that there are no magic words.  In order to lead someone into hypnosis, that person has to be willing to go there. Often the people you see on stage are more than willing. For whatever reasons, they are enthusiastic about giving up self control and allowing someone else to take charge. They know that there are limits to what can happen on stage and they are only agreeing to give up control within those limits. What you see in hypnosis is an agreement between two people. Like all agreements between human beings, it stretches as far...
Read more

Good with people

What do you think of when you hear the phrase "good with people?" When a wine is good with steak, it means that both the steak and the wine taste better when enjoyed together. If you are 'good with people' that could mean that both you and they perform better when you work together. "Good with people" should not be confused with charm or grace. Many famous leaders have, in the absence of any obvious charm or eloquence, managed to get people to produce at high levels. Some introverts fail to be influential; some extraverts fail to be effective. The most useful criteria for "good with people" is the performance that results when an individual is working with others: does the sum exceed the total of the parts? Or would they all have been better working from separate cubicles? We are entering the season of networking: it's a perfect time to observe the difference between the people who are working the room and the people who are making the room w...
Read more

The fine line between observations, suggestions and commands

I have been watching Tony Robbins this week in the documentary called " I Am Not Your Guru ." You can read a nicely ambivalent review in the Financial Times here.   I think the ambivalence is built into the process, which might be surprising given the loud celebration that characterizes the Date with Destiny in the film. For those of us whose work has evolved from NLP, there are lessons to be learned from modelling the most famous and successful practitioner of NLP (Robbins has far surpassed all the founders by all measures of success). Because he does so much so well, Robbins lets us see how fine the line is between observing and suggesting. Let me explain. Robbins frames his "interventions" both with the exercises and performances we do not see in the film and with his invitations. The film opens with an intervention with a young man who says he is suicidal; it is only later that we see Robbins say he is looking for someone who is suicidal to work with. Since...
Read more