Simply Poetry

This possibly experimental mindfulness session uses poetry as a tool to heighten focus. It discusses using the imagery in poetry, and the reader's voice in this instance, as an anchor to the present moment and the feelings evoked by the poems. It touches on contemplating death as a practice commonly understood in Buddhism, but available to secular practitioners. Poems included are 'Experience' Emily Dickenson, and 'The Poet', 'All things die' and 'Nothin will die' by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to this somewhat experimental mindfulness meditation based on poetry.

I'd like to jump straight in with a poem by Emily Dickinson.

Experience by Emily Dickinson.

I stepped from plank to plank so slow and cautiously.

The stars about my head I felt,

About my feet to see.

I knew not but the next would be my final inch.

This gave me that precarious gait,

Some call experience.

Some time ago now when I was looking to deepen my own mindfulness practice,

I committed to reading a poem a day,

Usually very early in the morning and simply sitting quietly and reading the poem to myself.

I found that this gave me something to reflect upon when I was entering a mindfulness meditation.

It wasn't necessarily the anchor of my breath or the sounds.

I could think on the imagery and the metaphor of the poem.

This worked for me and I'd like to share some of the thinking and some of the poems I later discovered.

One of the purposes of mindful meditation is to take ourselves out of our head and into our body,

Into our experience of this moment here and now.

We can focus on breathing,

We can focus on sounds,

We can even focus on our thoughts as we watch them glide by.

But whatever we choose to focus on or meditate on,

We're trying to move out of our heads and into our bodies to gain a more realistic experience of the present moment.

And I think the poetry through its use of imagery and through playing to the senses and its descriptive nature can help us associate more directly with our experience of the present moment.

It may seem paradoxical that we would focus on a poem and therefore be thinking about that imagery,

But what I've found is that by focusing on a part of the poem that resonated with me,

By choosing an image,

A sensation,

A feeling,

And really focusing upon that,

Breathing it in,

Visualising it,

I was able to get a very real and tangible experience of the poem in the moment and it provided an interesting backdrop to my general mindfulness practice.

So what I would like to invite you to do now is to simply sit with an open mind and let yourself feel the poem that I'm about to read to you.

And you can do this a number of ways.

You can begin by sitting in your normal mindfulness position.

You might want to take two or three deep breaths to centre and ground yourself.

You may wish to close your eyes.

You can then focus on the content of the poem,

Listening to what the poem is about and the imagery involved.

Or you can simply use the sound of my voice as a focus,

Concentrating on the ebb and flow of the voice and less upon the content of the poem.

And as always,

As and when you catch your mind wandering and drifting into daydream or being distracted by other thoughts,

You can bring your mind gently and kindly back to the poem,

Back to listening to the imagery,

Thinking about the metaphor,

Thinking about what the poem evokes in you in feelings,

Or simply back to the sound of my voice and the ebb and flow of the tone of my voice as the poem continues.

The Poet by Alfred Lord Tennyson The poet in a golden clime was born with golden stars above,

Dowered with the hate of hate,

The scorn of scorn,

The love of love.

He saw through life and death,

Through good and ill,

He saw through his own soul the marvel of the everlasting will and open scroll.

Before him lay,

With echoing feet he threaded,

The secretest walks of fame.

The viewless arrows of his thoughts were headed and winged with flame.

Like Indian reeds blown from his silver tongue and of so fierce a flight,

From culp unto caucus they sung,

Filling with light.

And vagrant melodies the winds which bore them earthward till they lit,

Then,

Like the arrow seeds of the field flower,

The fruitful wit.

Cleaning took root and springing forth anew,

Where'er they fell behold,

Like to the mother plant in semblance grew a flower all gold.

And bravely furnished all abroad to fling the winged shafts of truth,

To throng with stately blooms the breathing spring of hope and youth.

So many minds did gird their orbs with beams,

The wand did fling the fire,

Heaven flowed upon the soul in many dreams of high desire.

This truth was multiplied on truth,

The world like one great garden showed,

And through the wreaths of floating dark up curled,

Rare sunrise flowed.

And freedom reared in that august sunrise her beautiful bold brow,

When rites and forms before his burning eyes melted like snow.

There was no blood upon her maiden robes,

Sunned by those orient skies,

But round about the circles of the globes of her keen eyes,

And in her raiment's hem was traced in flame,

Wisdom,

A name to shake all evil dreams of power,

A sacred name.

And when she spake her words did gather thunder as they ran,

And as the lightning to the thunder which follows it,

Writhing the spirit of man,

Making earth wonder.

So was the meaning to her words,

No sword of wrath her right arm whirled,

But one poor poet's scroll,

And with his word she shook the world.

I'd like to leave you as you reflect upon the poem,

The feelings that it may have evoked in you,

The ideas that it may have generated,

As you sit silently contemplating how you feel,

How that poem resonated with you.

It's interesting to note how we can use the tools of mindfulness we already use when returning to our breath to return to a specific thought process,

Or to return to feeling a specific sensation or emotion.

Certainly that has been my experience of working with poetry in this way.

The next poem I would like to share with you,

Also by Alfred Lord Tennyson,

Is about death.

I came across it when I was reading and thinking about Buddhism in particular,

And its contemplation of death,

Not as a morbid or sinister thought process in any way,

But as a recognition of the impermanence of all things,

And as a call to really take heed of the present moment,

And to live,

Not hedonistically,

But to live fulfilling potential,

And fulfilling the promise of the present moment,

Being aware of how our lives progress in the moment,

From moment to moment,

Rather than this incessant craving for more,

Craving for the future,

Or the regretting of the past,

And the getting lost in the stories we tell ourselves.

So it was in this mind,

Reflecting a little on death,

And the impermanence of things,

That I discovered the following poem.

All Things Will Die by Alfred Lord Tennyson Clearly the blue river chimes in its flowing under my eye.

Warmly and broadly the south winds are blowing over the sky.

One after another the white clouds are fleeting.

Every harp this May morning,

Enjoyance is beating,

Full merrily,

Yet all things must die.

The stream will cease to flow,

The wind will cease to blow,

The clouds will cease to fleet,

This heart will cease to beat,

For all things must die.

All Things Must Die Spring will come nevermore,

O vanity,

Death waits at the door.

See,

Our friends are all forsaking the wine and the merry making.

We are called,

We must go,

Laid low,

Very low,

In the dark we must lie.

The merry glee's are still,

The voice of the bird shall no more be heard,

Nor the wind on the hill,

O misery.

Hark,

Death is calling,

While I speak to ye,

The jaw is falling,

The red cheek paling,

The strong limbs failing,

Ice with the warm blood mixing,

The eyeballs fixing.

Nine times goes the passing bell,

Ye merry souls,

Farewell.

The old earth had a birth,

As all men know,

Long ago.

And the old earth must die,

So let the warm winds rage and the blue wave beat the shore,

For even and morn,

Ye will never see through eternity.

All things were born,

Ye would come nevermore,

For all things must die.

Perhaps take a moment now to centre yourself.

Take one or two deep breaths.

And give yourself a moment to identify the feelings that this poem has evoked in you.

What is your relationship to the idea of eventual death,

Or to death in general?

How comfortable do you feel sitting with that emotion?

And I would like to end this mindfulness meditation session with Tennyson's own slightly more upbeat take on the idea of death and regrowth.

Where will the heart be weary of beating and nature die?

Never,

Oh,

Never,

Nothing will die.

The stream flows,

The wind blows,

The cloud fleets,

The heart beats.

Nothing will die.

Nothing will die.

All things will change through eternity.

Tis the world's winter,

Autumn and summer are gone long ago.

Earth is dry to the centre,

But spring,

A newcomer,

A spring rich and strange,

Shall make the winds blow round and round,

Through and through,

Here and there,

Till the air and the ground shall be filled with life anew.

The world was never made.

It will change,

But it will not fade.

So let the wind rage,

For even and morn ever will be through eternity.

Nothing was born,

Nothing will die.

All things will change.

I'm very grateful to you for sitting with me today during this Mindfulness Meditation practice.

I'm grateful that you persevered through the poetry and I'm hopeful that this may inspire you to seek out poetry of your own,

To add some depth to your own mindfulness practice and maybe discover something new along the way.

As I'd said at the beginning of this session,

This is somewhat experimental.

I would really appreciate comments if you've listened thus far.

You can leave a comment in the comment section on the Insight Timer and let me know how this session worked for you.

Reviews

I enjoyed this and yes, I think adding poetry to my morning practice would be lovely. Thank you. 🙏❤️

I really enjoyed that. Would like more with different potlets. Mary Oliver springs to mind as a good source of poems for imagery and reflection 🙏🦋

I loved this, I felt the need to listen to a second time. Listening to your chosen poetry allowed me to float into a clear and open landscape. To be with the words without judgment, to be like a cloud passing by.
Thank you.

Thank you for this! Loved the juxtaposition of Tennyson’s poems.

I love the premise of reading a poem prior to meditation and then focusing on one part of it. These were all three such beautiful poems. I do believe the last one to be true.. we don’t die but change instead. Thank you ❤️🙏🏼

I really enjoyed the natural conversational style and the openness about it being experimental. I appreciated the pairing of the last two poems, with their interaction adding something potent. A wonderful invitation and something I would like to experiment with some more myself now. Thank you.

Really enjoyed that, ALT isn't my style of poet, but that actually made me listen even harder and look past some of the rather old fashioned (I think the kids would say 'cringe') rhyming he was so fond of! A really great idea with tons of potential here, especially with younger people who don't seem to be taught much poetry in school anymore. Mary Oliver, RS Thomas and Edward Thomas are three poets who I regularly read and might make for interesting mindfulness meditations.

Marvelous. Will be looking for more poetry. A little longer time after each poem would be great for absorption, also I loved the juxtaposition of the poems you chose, much thanks

I really liked this session. I do something similar. Sometimes I use a passage of music, sometimes short story-scripture-lyrics-poetry. After the meditation I journal, have a conversation with the piece, and/or write down ideas or questions I want to explore further. I was thinking of recording some of the poems I read and some of the poem I’ve written so I can adjust the experience. I think that there’s a difference in the listening, as a opposed to the speaking. After this experience I’m definitely doing that. I hope that you continue to post things like this. Thank you.

I love the idea of incorporating a poem a day into my daily meditation. Thank you. It was wonderful.

Worth listening again, like the idea of poetry and mindfulness. Recently at Mindfulness session was introduced to Mary Oliver poems. Many thanks Paul

Wonderful, I love poetry. I loved the idea of paying attention to the content, how I felt when listening and or to your voice. Really enjoyed the experience. Thank you for sharing 🧘 🙏

Thank you. I use poetry frequently as a doorway into my contemplation. Generally broadens and enriched my experience.