Abstract
Writing and reading poetry is a way to grow emotionally and intellectually, as language articulates and frames experience symbolically. Writing poetry is also a natural process, serving young people’s innate need to explain themselves and their lives in the world. Poetry is a vehicle for expressing altruistic values and philosophical explorations about life’s meaning. And both reading and writing poetry is a free and available resource that can be used for self-exploration, gratification, and healing for a lifetime. Reading poetry allows the reader to connect with the writer in an emotional and creative manner forming universal relationships. The aim of this essay is to highlight the many benefits that poetry has on the lives of young people.
Effects of poetry and creative writing on young people
It is a common knowledge that we live in a consumer society. Contemporary society sets its standards and chooses respective role models. Where the cult of consumerism is imposed, poetry turns out to be a superfluous source of information, shifted out and partially forgotten. Poetry cannot satisfy materialistic needs as well as it cannot help to make a career or gather wealth.
It can seem that poetry is aimed at a narrow group of people, mostly poets. In fact, it is not true. The only question is what the value of poetry for general public is and what poetry can contribute to personal development of an individual.
Hectic lives of many people today resemble races with short stops. Work and study, achievements and travelling, children upbringing and other household cares sweep over people’s lives in XXI century. In this daily race we often forget about ourselves and the main purpose we embark ourselves on for.
Poetry always reflects a current experience and emotions that an individual undergoes in present times. On opening any poetry collection, an attentive reader will soon feel that the time stops for a while in the imaginary world that makes relaxation and rest possible. This very moment caught and reflected by the poet encourages a reader to speculate about one’s live and reevaluate some events.
Any poetry, even of the most "neutral" content, always bears impresses of values that the author shares. The most important, amazing and meaningful author’s experience finds its place between the lines. Due to this, poems, of course, encourage readers to speculate upon personal priorities, to clarify life goals and become conscious of what is going on around. For only through understanding of what the reader can benefit from in the world, he or she feels the true value of life itself. Through adaptation of author’s experience a thoughtful reader turns over a new leaf of his or her life. The events that seemed to be bitter and unjust before may be reevaluated.
In particular, such reevaluation may become vital for people trapped into a crisis. The crisis is always a break in habitual way of living, unexpected and often very distressing turning point in the life of an individual. However, it is an opportunity to contrast the past with the present, to search for new solutions and set new goals.
Poetry has a unique power to express complex thoughts and feelings in clear and simple way. Poetry is a very autobiographical literature genre. Whatever the poet would like to express, he or she has no chance to conceal personal point of view and personal experience. The poet utterly reveals in creative works the position on one or another issue. Society instills us with the roles to play every day. We have to be restrained and detached in our opinions while poetry requires being brave enough to reveal oneself to general public, running the risk of encountering misunderstanding, sneers and bewilderment.
Perhaps, our unique experiences are the most important of our assets. What we have learned about the life may prove to be important for other people with similar difficulties and may become a key to a way out. On this point we come across the importance of poetry in modern life: the issues expressed in the poetic form can contribute into the solutions of real problems.
The power of the poetry is undoubtedly linked to its peculiar form. The world of poetry is deep and mysterious that is way it attracts a great deal of young minds. The language is rather specific as well as the imagery and the artistic form. Both important and minute events acquire implicit meaning; and they are expressed by the author in an exquisite and distinctive way.
Poetry can have a curative effect on readers. In modern psychology there is a field of study that is called bibliotherapy; and significant place is given to therapy via reading poetry. Indeed, such work is quite effective in solving a number of psychological problems.
Nevertheless, poetry is not for each and everyone. There are some reasons for inability to comprehend poetry by some people. It is difficult to understand poems. Poetry remains "closed" to those who do not want to be curious and thoughtful. “Curiosity is a useful attitude when reading poetry and effective technique directs your curiosity into asking questions, drawing you into a conversation with the poem.” (Poets.org) The process of reading is always intensive and requires an analytical approach. The ability to experience compassion to characters is indispensable prerequisite to understanding poetry. A person with dull emotions and lack of curiosity is simply unable to comprehend the sentiments expressed by the author. For such people poetry remains something strange that is beyond their understanding. In all probability, an SMS-language and Internet forums oriented person is unlikely to appreciate poetry. To understand poetry one needs to have relatively highly developed communicative and intellectual skills. To those who do little reading, verses are not easy to comprehend. The attitude towards poetry is frequently determined by the reader’s inner state at a given moment.
These facts lead to the conclusion that poetry has a greater impact on immature emotions of youth and characters that have not shaped yet. In rare cases poetry can influence youth in a destructive way, but in general there are a lot of obvious benefits of reading poetry, the ones that are figured out and evaluated in this essay.
On this evidence, in the article “Creative writing in recovery from severe mental illness” it was stated that poetry helps young people to become more open and independent from the social principles instilled in their minds. (King, R., Neilsen, P., & White, E., 2013) They can express themselves via creative writing. Moreover, writing poetry may be considered to be a way out of personal crises, in particular in juvenile age. By the way, during these years many indulge themselves in creative writing. Adolescents are extremely sensitive, and to tame overflowed emotions they transform them into verse lines more or less successfully. It is not about writing great artistic works that will recover their value in centuries. Youth poetry can be as simple and naive as the authors’ beliefs; nevertheless, it bares an important beneficial influence. In verses one finds something that is missed in the life. In her article “Why write poetry” Jane Hirshfield points out: “What we want from art is whatever is missing from the lives we are already living and making. Something is always missing, and so art-making is endless.” (Psychologytoday.com)
It has been mentioned previously that in order to comprehend poetry one has to develop good communicative and intellectual skills. Thus, it is important to figure out communicative benefits. While writing poetry, the author gives thoughts to plenty of acute issues. To express his or her opinion, the author use affluent vocabulary and to enrich the vocabulary, the author needs to read a lot. This way reading and writing practice has positive influence on the way such people speak and the words they choose in conversations. This point is strongly related to cognitive development of young people. To exercise creative writing the author applies such skills as critical and creative thinking, information analysis, languages skills etc. The idea has been proved in the research “Interventions with street youth: A commentary on the practice-based research literature.” (Karabanow, J., & Clement, P., 2004) The key concept is the more we give thoughts to current social or other problems the more chances we have to create something unprecedented or even to invent something unknown before. Thus, we can state that writing poetry in rare cases may contribute to development of the society in general.
According to M. Roberts, “People who write poetry can become more in touch with larger issues of life’s meaning and connectedness, developing a spiritual appreciation of life.” (Roberts, 2010). Poetry contributes first to inner development. Young writers let the thoughts through their minds and then reflect the feelings they experience. It seems to be an unnecessary waste of time, but if to look closer things change. The poetry teaches youths to sympathize, to experience compassion, to speculate about genuine love and friendship – the things that are much rarer at present than they were before. Intellectual youth is able to differentiate between the good and the bad they are exposed to in abundance.
Finally, poetry provides a safe and private experience, with individual control over the outcome. (Stange & Wyant, 2008) It is definitely better to share problems in poetic form than to find consolation in bad habits abuse or in extreme youth cultures. Poetry is another way to express oneself. It is far more luckily to be beneficial than destructive.
Conclusion
References
Hirsch, E. (2007). How to read a poem. Poets.org. Retrieved from https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/how-read-poem-0
Hirshfield, J. (2014). Why write poetry. Psychologytoday.com. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/one-true-thing/201401/jane-hirshfield-why-write-poetry
Karabanow, J., & Clement, P. (2004). Interventions with street youth: A commentary on the practice-based research literature. Brief Treatment and Crisis Intervention, 4(1), 93.
King, R., Neilsen, P., & White, E. (2013). Creative writing in recovery from severe mental illness.International Journal of Mental Health Nursing, 22(5), 444-452. doi:10.1111/j.1447-0349.2012.00891.x
Roberts, M. (2010). Emotional intelligence, empathy and the educative power of poetry: a Deleuzo‐Guattarian perspective. Journal of psychiatric and mental health nursing, 17(3), 236-241.
Stange, T. V., & Wyant, S. L. (2008). Poetry proves to be positive in the primary grades. Reading Horizons, 48(3), 201.
