Make Thoughts Beautiful Again
How poetry has become an instrumental tool for my own sense-making and conscious attentiveness to what's happening around us.
More and more people are reading poetry. I am both optimistic and cautious about this. Attempts to convey truth beyond the diminished ways of being that many have become accustomed to is worthwhile - and poetry is absolutely a pathway towards this. My main question is, what “poetry” are people reading - and is it any good?
Take “insta-poetry” as an example. How many users of Instagram are likely to remember an “insta-poem” in a years time? How many in five? As I shared in response to
in one of my notes some time back:Most of the best poets have been swallowed up by a techno-corporate machine who doesn’t even refer to them as “poets” - they refer to them as “marketers” and “copywriters”. Here’s some examples of advertising I’ve seen recently which can absolutely fall into the category of poetry:
In some ways, this is no different from the Epinician poets of Ancient Greece, who were paid to compose anthems and epigraphs celebrating particular athletes or heroic war victories. That said, it is different in one key area: the Greeks still aspired to create a sense of beauty in their work. In our modern day context, the “poets” are not here to create beauty. They merely rely on a condensed set of poetic tricks to create a lust for a product or service.
But what about the poets not working for some corporate purpose, who are producing poetry for the sake of poetry? Publishing houses are still releasing collections from new authors. But, perhaps unsurprisingly, something similar has happened. The aspiration towards beauty - or a transcendent value - has been lost for many self-proclaimed artists of today. The insta-poets efforts are striking examples of this.
Poetry is the pursuit of beautiful communication. Set forms and structures, with rules about rhymes and syllable counts, contribute to this sense of beauty. This, too, is often neglected today, despite poetry being defined by its reliance on structured speech.
It’s this structured speech that gives poetry its ability to cast a spell on us. In the delivery of precise vocal frequencies in a particular pattern, we use a form of magic that affects us through means psychologically, spiritually and psychically - and even physically. It is why we can talk about a great poetry or spoken word recitals “moving” us; we are experiencing a flow and movement of energy from the orator to the listener.
As such, the words we use will affect, shape and in-form the world around us. One of the most striking examples of this comes through studies on water, where the likes of Dr Masaru Emoto and Veda Austin have shown how our thoughts and communicated information can affect the structure of water. Given our physical bodies are made of water, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that the narratives and stories we tell ourselves are affecting the structure and functioning of our bodies - and of others around us.
If I’m telling myself that I am “ugly”, “unlovable”, “unwanted”, “not good enough” and any variation of those ideas, then I shape myself and the world around me to reinforce those ideas - and I have been there! Similarly, if we parrot the lines and excuses of political leaders of why their increasing impositions on our personal lives are acceptable, we only perpetrate the Orwellian society that some would like to see implemented.
So what happens when I tell myself the opposite: that I am valuable - I am loved - I am worthy - I am the captain of my soul? The world around me shapes to this lens. When I state my value and sovereignty to the world with my word (note that “world” and “word” are just one letter apart - and, too, that “In the beginning was the word”), the world supports what I state - but only if I truly believe it with every ounce of my being. This has absolutely been my experience, even when temptations towards darkness surround me in different aspects of life. When I acknowledge that I am here for a purpose, and that I bring a gift to this world, I arrive exactly where I need to be, whenever I need to be there, and will be supported all the way. I find great comfort in that, even in “stressful” times.
To say that road is easy would be a lie. My own patterns of self-sabotage and hideous belief systems required heavy dedication to rewrite and “dis-spell”. It’s perhaps no surprise that I turned to poetry to accomplish this. The best poetry is a magic spell that changes the way we think and feel about ourselves and the world around us. When I read, write and recite poetry that speaks to the beauty of the human experience - and the return to it from periods of “ugliness” - then my experience of life increasingly becomes one of beauty. Beauty becomes the spell I cast for myself and for those around me, and creates a beautiful world around me.
Where the souls around me have been trapped in hideous thoughts for too long, my mission is to Make Thoughts Beautiful Again. If you’d like to join me in this mission, I invite you to join my Master Your Word program for monthly poetry workshops (the next one will be on Sunday November 30th) and/or my 1-on-1 poetic coaching. Use the button below to see all the details.
I will leave you with this short video of Peter Hitchens who crushes this question on a panel some years ago regarding remembering and reciting poetry, which sums up my thoughts perfectly.
Thank you for making the time to read this piece. From next week, I’ll be moving to release my pieces on a Tuesday instead of a Monday. I find Tuesdays are generally quieter than a Monday, and as such I can make more time to truly enjoy creative and educational material that comes my way. I suspect the same may be true for many of my readers and supporters, and look forward to accommodating you when you are less in the “doing” and more in the “being”.
With gratitude,
Tom
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'Sing your Song' is a poem I wrote which I could share with you, if you provide a way to do so.
Thanks, Tom. I love your love of poetry which I share, as a much, as an older person. I write my own, purely for pleasure, and sometimes as way of communicating my own felt thoughts & experiences of life. Sometimes these have been shared. My own 'style' and no training. My prayer for you is this, 'Sing your Song'! Best wishes