Poetry Heals
I”ve said it often here – poetry is powerful. Words can unite and words can heal – but I”ve never thought of that in literal terms. Until today. That”s when I found this from Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert (thanks to John from GotPoetry for posting the link).
Apparently, several months back, Adams lost his voice after severe allergies strained his vocal muscles. This resulted in a condition called Spasmodic Dysphoria, a rather rare and exotic condition where there”s a “disconnect” between the part of the brain that controls speech and the part of the brain that wants to make it. The result – the inability to frame words and speak aloud. For Adams, who is a public speaker in addition to a comic strip creator, the loss of his voice was difficult, but could have been worse. He found that he could still speak in some situations – that the process of public speaking was different enough from the normal use of speech in day to day communications that his brain could still process it. Now, I”m sure you”re wondering what this has to do with poetry… here”s Scott”s description of what happened the other day…
My theory was that the part of my brain responsible for normal speech was still intact, but for some reason had become disconnected from the neural pathways to my vocal cords. (That”s consistent with any expert”s best guess of what”s happening with Spasmodic Dysphonia. It”s somewhat mysterious.) And so I reasoned that there was some way to remap that connection. All I needed to do was find the type of speaking or context most similar – but still different enough – from normal speech that still worked. Once I could speak in that slightly different context, I would continue to close the gap between the different-context speech and normal speech until my neural pathways remapped. Well, that was my theory. But I”m no brain surgeon.
The day before yesterday, while helping on a homework assignment, I noticed I could speak perfectly in rhyme. Rhyme was a context I hadn”t considered. A poem isn”t singing and it isn”t regular talking. But for some reason the context is just different enough from normal speech that my brain handled it fine.
Jack be nimble, Jack be quick.
Jack jumped over the candlestick.
I repeated it dozens of times, partly because I could. It was effortless, even though it was similar to regular speech. I enjoyed repeating it, hearing the sound of my own voice working almost flawlessly. I longed for that sound, and the memory of normal speech. Perhaps the rhyme took me back to my own childhood too. Or maybe it”s just plain catchy. I enjoyed repeating it more than I should have. Then something happened.
My brain remapped.
My speech returned.
Amazing… and nearly as amazing, Adams ended his post with an invitation to readers to share their own happiest moments. On a blog that usually has 25,000 readers a day, Adams logged over 180,00 views – and well over 100 readers moved to comment and share their own stories of happy moments. Poetry really does heal. Words really do have power. Whatever you”re doing today, stop for five minutes and go read Scott”s blog and all the wonderful, happy moments people shared. Then.. take five more minutes and read a poem. Out loud. It”s good for you.