There is a very close relationship between poetry and spirituality. One could say that spirituality is the heart and soul of all the best poetry.
Spirituality is the incorporeal, the nonmaterial, the soul, all the things in the world we cannot see, but hopefully still believe in. Spirit literally means breath and wind. It incorporates the very air we breathe in, and what that air consists of. Spirit is our thoughts and feelings as sentient beings, the animating principle that gives us life. It is who we are on the inside.
Part of what makes us who we are is our experiences through our lives. This connects up with poetry because poetry is written to convey those experiences. It is the best medium to use to express our inner self, our soul, because poetry compresses profound meaning into a few words. It reaches deep within us to confront and answer questions about the meaning of life, why we live and die, and what our purpose is for being here.
Poetry is a powerful form of expression that gets to the heart of any life’s issue. It can use words that resonate through rhythmic song, almost like chants. It can be a form of prayer to higher powers, or deepen our connection to the universe, our world, and other people. Poetry, written at its best, results in a state of deep contact with our subconscious, a state of meditation. Once you start writing, it flows and your words can pour forth like water from a jug.
Poetry taps into the universal flow. We all generally want a sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves. We need to believe that there is more to life than just what we can see of our physical world. Poetry joins us to something transcendent which can be different for everyone, whether God, Jesus, Buddha, Brahma, or meditation out in the temple of nature. The point is that it’s a universal experience.
Poetry is the music of words. It is beauty, truth, and love all rolled into one. It brings us into contact with the divine. It can be used as a helpful spiritual practice, a ritual that enlarges and deepens our questions and answers about life and its meaning.
Neither poetry nor spirituality as a lifestyle care about worldly things. In fact, the spiritual life is in direct antithesis to the materialistic life and all of its emphasis on acquisitions. Poets can be like monks leading the ascetic life, searching for the heart and soul of all living things. They can conduct this search best through the deeper language and form of poetry. Poets and spiritual people know that we are all one in the universe, all connected. This is why, throughout history, many poets have been mystics wandering the world without a home. When we can feel this connection to the universe, we feel the love that is the basic structure binding all things together. For there to be spirituality there has to be love, and love is the heart and soul of good poetry.
Sometimes, when we are in moments of despair, I believe we can contact God and the divine better through poetry than through any other means. I know that for me writing poetry was a mystical experience. It made me feel like my parents were present in the room with me helping me write my poems, and this was after they had died. Writing poetry had a strong healing effect that helped me recover from their deaths. I think this was due to the strengthening of the bonds and connections I felt with my them on the other side. Poetry writing reassured me that our relationship didn’t just end with their deaths, that it continued on afterwards, as did they. Poetry is a mighty power that can do all this and more, if we open ourselves up to its magic.
We deal with all of humanity’s most basic central questions by writing spiritual poems. Questions of mortality and immortality, the impermanence of life, separation, good and evil, isolation, loneliness and alienation. Poetry helps us both ask and answer the questions, and gives us hope that there is a pattern to it all, a larger design, a reason, a purpose.
There is a wealth of great spiritual poetry written throughout the ages, from the ancient Greek Horace, to Japanese Haiku, from Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, and Tennyson, to Rumi and Emily Dickinson. I hope you will read some of these marvelous writers’ works and feel the universal love and connection that flows through their poems. And maybe even try to write some spiritual poems yourself!
Here are some good reference sources I used while researching this blog: