{"id":29058,"date":"2022-03-20T22:22:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-20T22:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=29058"},"modified":"2022-03-20T22:29:30","modified_gmt":"2022-03-20T22:29:30","slug":"how-poetry-can-help-people-get-through-hard-times-4-essential-reads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/how-poetry-can-help-people-get-through-hard-times-4-essential-reads\/","title":{"rendered":"How poetry can help people get through hard times \u2013 4 essential reads"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Alvin Buyinza<\/a>, The Conversation<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Russia invaded Ukraine, Ukrainian American writer Ilya Kaminsky\u2019s poem \u201cWe Lived Happily During the War<\/a>\u201d went viral across social media<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Poetry can often help people make sense of the world in difficult times. For World Poetry Day<\/a>, The Conversation U.S. has gathered four articles on the power of poetry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Poetry gives people a voice<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In 1991, Kentucky poet Frank X. Walker coined the term \u201cAffrilachian\u201d after attending a poetry reading that featured several Black Appalachian poets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amy M. Alvarez<\/a>, assistant teaching professor of English at West Virginia University, and Jameka Hartley<\/a>, an instructor of gender and race studies at University of Alabama, wrote<\/a> on the history of how Black people in Appalachia found their voice in poetry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBy coining the terms \u2018Affrilachia\u2019 and \u2018Affrilachian,\u2019 Walker sought to upend assumptions about who is part of Appalachia,\u201d they write. \u201cRather than accepting the single story of Appalachia as white and poor, Walker wrote a new one, forging a path for Black Appalachian artists.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Comforting us in grief<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

After many of her loved ones died, Emily Dickinson fell into a deep depression. She secluded herself in her home and wrote nearly 2,000 poems \u2013 many of which were about grief and death. One of her most famous poems, \u201cIt Feels A Shame To Be Alive<\/a>,\u201d was written in the midst of the Civil War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dickinson\u2019s poems resonate well during a pandemic that\u2019s left many people in despair<\/a>, wrote Matthew Redmond<\/a>, a doctoral candidate in English at Stanford University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDickinson\u2019s imagery shows how keenly she would have understood what we might feel, dwarfed by a mountain of mortality that will not stop growing,\u201d Redmond wrote<\/a>. \u201cThe same anger, exhaustion and sense of futility were her constant companions in later life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Poetry can help students learn<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Amanda Gorman made headlines in 2021<\/a> when, at 22, she became the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history. Her success was an opportunity for educators to use spoken-word poetry to teach students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three educators \u2013 Kathleen M. Alley<\/a>, associate professor of literacy at Mississippi State University; Mukoma Wa Ngugi<\/a>, associate professor of literatures in English at Cornell University; and Wendy R. Williams<\/a>, assistant professor of English at Arizona State University \u2013 wrote<\/a> on how teaching spoken-word poetry can benefit students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spoken-word poetry \u201cholds the promise of helping young people to connect with ideas as well as providing a means to deepen comprehension and develop understanding and empathy, which can then be applied to real-world situations,\u201d wrote Alley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Poetry can helps us laugh in dark times<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

James Bond is known for delivering classic one-liners, especially in the face of danger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cThunderball<\/a>\u201d, Bond harpoons a villain and then jokes, \u201cI think he got the point.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Over 150,000 readers rely on The Conversation\u2019s newsletters to understand the world.<\/em> Sign up today<\/a>.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But killer zingers like his can also be found in ancient poems. In Homer\u2019s \u201cThe Iliad<\/a>,\u201d Polydamas spears Prothoenor in the shoulder. As Prothoenor dies, Polydamas jokingly suggests that his spear will be good tool for Prothoenor to lean on like \u201ca staff when he descends to the underworld.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andrew M. McClellan<\/a>, a lecturer in classics and humanities at San Diego State University, wrote about why ancient poets literally loved to add insult to injury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe jokes are for the audience, and it\u2019s as close as the genre gets to breaking the fourth wall,\u201d he wrote<\/a>. \u201cViewers are attuned to these witticisms not simply because they are funny, but because they\u2019re self-consciously ridiculous. They help distance the audience from the often horrific levels of violence on display.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Editor\u2019s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation\u2019s archives.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alvin Buyinza<\/a>, Editorial and Outreach Assistant, The Conversation<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alvin Buyinza, The Conversation When Russia invaded Ukraine, Ukrainian American writer Ilya Kaminsky\u2019s poem \u201cWe Lived Happily During the War\u201d went viral across social media. Poetry can often help people make sense of the world in difficult times. For World Poetry Day, The Conversation U.S. has gathered four articles on the power of poetry. 1. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":29059,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[292],"tags":[9437,8551,2275,336,149,5710,2033,9425,3171,3504],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29058"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29058"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29060,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29058\/revisions\/29060"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}