The Power of Poetry

Written by Marissa BeatyPhotography by Tori TisoThe first poem I fell in love with was in my senior year of high school. We were asked, in my English Literature class to analyze Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise.” As my teacher handed out sheets of paper, the stanza’s printed neatly across the page in deep black ink, I thought to myself how pointless poetry was.At the time, I failed to understand the complexity of its simplicity, and so, I sat there staring blankly at the page before me, angered by the task I was being forced into. While I read, something began to shift. As if lifted by the words, my hatred towards poetry began to rise, and I couldn’t get enough. As if starved for years, I devoured the works of Waltman, Kipling, and Neruda. I fell in love with Frost and Hughes, and found myself far more entranced by Pound than ever anticipated. While My childhood had bloomed through books, my adulthood was primed by poems.As my eyes opened to the world of poetry, as did the world of poetry to me. I began recognizing the use of poetry all around me, and with the entrance of Beyonce’s Lemonade, which utilizes the words of Warsan Shire, poetry became a force within every facet of life I held dear. It was in this moment, when I realized the true impact of poetry, that I questioned how it was that I had missed the importance of it. Throughout history, poetry was a tool for pushing against boundaries, of relinquishing one’s emotions, of detailing political anger, or cataloguing a life experience. It has been used by Shakespeare to relay everything from an unrequited love to a ghost story. It was used by Maya Angelou to acknowledge the black woman’s experience in a white, male dominated America. It was used by Martin Luther King to propel a civil rights movement that changed history forever.A novel has the ability to be influential, but a poem has the ability to be influential immediately. That is what I find so beautiful about this medium; it allows to express one’s emotions and detail one’s grievances in near instantaneity. It is a combination of letters arranged in various patterns and rhythms that lap across the tongue like a wave on the shore. Each wave punches the ground, interchanging existing sand with that within the wave, and in its collision, these two forms merge-- leaving behind marks across the shore and a beach which will forever be altered by this one collision. This is poetry. It is a punch. It is quick and precise, but it is also deeply impactful.If at this point, however, you still need convincing on the true power of poetry, I encourage you to read one of the following pieces, and as you read I want you to cease thinking. Seriously. I want you to clear your mind and look at the page as if you had never before read a sentence. Opened your mind, forgo your conventions, and give yourself the space to simply be. It is in a state of existence and understanding poetry becomes its most influential. With that in mind, here are my top picks for incoming and preexisting poetry lovers:If You Forget Me - Pablo NerudaA Dream Within A Dream - Edgar Allan Poe Worst Poetry - Sarah KayTo the New Year - W.S. MerwinA Gift  - Amy Lowell