A Place of Peace By Jan Wiezorek

By Jan Wiezorek

Buchanan, MI

When I was a young man, an art dealer told me, “Art works on us.” He meant it changes us for the better. Now that I am a much older man, I believe that all the arts—especially poetry—have this transformative power.

We want and need poetry to change us. The emotions we feel while reading poems show us that poetry “works” on us. It helps us to envision other possibilities. It even changes us through the words and images it conveys. I want to suggest that in today’s world of division, now more than ever, we need poetry to change us with its healing power of peace.

For me, poetry is peaceful, therapeutic healing that takes me quickly from where I am to where peace can be. In this dream-like reading of poetry, you and I can enter the unknown in just a few lines. Here, we can “discuss” issues and experiment along with the poet. Together, we envision solutions and alternatives.

Whether our concerns are relationships, violence, stress, family life, climate change, politics, social media, angst, worry—you name it—poetry helps us cut through confusion and offers us peace in contentious times. We can come to terms with life’s questions and difficulties by reading and writing poems. Poetry may not give us direct answers, but it does enable us to imagine. It sets the stage for larger thinking.

I am reminded of what Pam Blair, founder of The Poetry Den at Indiana University South Bend Civil Rights Heritage Center, recently told me about poetry’s urgency in her life. Back in 1995, when Blair was going through a divorce, she recalls being in “a low place, not knowing how to express what I was feeling,” she says. Blair used poetry writing to get at those feelings. When she read her poem “Divorce” to others, it was “well received and healing for me,” she adds. “The response to the poem brought me to a level where I could move forward beyond a state of hurt. You can call that peace, yes!”

An expression of peace through poetry came to me during an evening I met with other poets in April at the South Bend Museum of Art for An Ekphrastic Event for Sharing the Muse 2024 poetry reading. All the poems presented related to artworks in SBMA’s collection. Coordinators Dick Reineke and Jake Webster, who were present that night, believe “We are all poets at heart.” And they profess we use the language of poetry to mark important moments of our lives.

What I found in that gallery setting of poetry and art was a warm, inviting community. I call it a place of welcoming and peace. And if peace exists there—in a space with standing room only for poets and guests of all ages and backgrounds—certainly, it can spread. I hope its influence will be felt throughout our many Michiana communities.

I like poetry so much because its peace is open-ended. For me, contemporary poetry does not offer a set meaning, but something new each time we encounter it. We all may see differences in a poem because of our experiences and poetry’s freely associative language. One poetic idea or image may lead us to see our “boxed” world in a different light. Often, contemporary poetry is nonlinear, with fragments, asides, and interruptions. Could these shake us loose and help us see things differently? Could such poems bring us new ways of envisioning peace?

Blair mentions that when she writes poetry to express feelings, she frequently thinks of “being in a pool and going to deep waters—it might be peace—but I can swim to the shallow edge if need be.” She finds both fear and a spiritual connection in water imagery that signifies “deeper feelings beyond ordinary chit-chat.”

Similarly, I believe poetry shares its “secrets” with us by blending thought and image, and by aiding us with its own brand of love, prayer, urgency, and revelation. Let us add peace as a mark of many kinds of poetry, too. It becomes the still, small voice we need.

But sometimes it is an urgent call that resonates in turbulent times, even waking us in the middle of the night. “Once, a poem awakened me from my sleep,” Blair says. Immediately, she wrote the poem “Don’t Wake Me,” which plays on the term “stay woke” and focuses on how easy it would be to remain asleep rather than fight for civil rights.

Lately, I’ve been reading U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s poetry collection titled The Carrying (Milkweed, 2021). Often, her poems discuss both challenges and hope, with such titles as “Instructions on Not Giving Up,” “What I Want to Remember,” and “What I Didn’t Know Before.”

Poetry also keeps us from forgetting memories that are too important to be dismissed. In challenging and traumatic times, it heals us with its own fount of peace. Reading and writing poetry daily offers me joy, growth, value, presence, beauty, acceptance, comfort, guidance, and much more. If you read poetry daily, you know the possibilities that poetic peace brings.

If you are new to reading and writing poetry regularly, try these ideas: Put yourself into the poems you read to learn what they might reveal to you. Be curious about poetry by listening to its prophetic voice. Try the free Poem-a-Day sent to your email daily (Poets.org).

Don’t Wake Me

By Pam Blair, 2017

South Bend, Indiana

Don’t wake me

I don’t want to stay woke

because being woke means

I take accountability

for the issues that lie before me.

Don’t wake me

I’d rather stay sleep

For when my eyes are closed

I have an excuse

to live in false realities.

Don’t startle me out my sleep

I wanna sleep walk

and pretend I don’t see

poverty, bigotry, a history

of wrong thinking and inequalities.

And don’t bother to set the alarm

It’s my constitutional right

to bear arms

deny death tolls

while gun laws refuse to be reformed.

Hypnotize me

and tell me things will be great again

let’s play childhood card games

I. declare. war.

The best 2 out of 3 wins.

Sing me to sleep

With my country ‘tis of thee.

Tell me a bedtime story

of the Statue of Liberty.

Remind me of America’s loyalty to immigrant and minorities.

Please

let me stay sleep.

Ignorance is bliss

A privilege I never had

Is a privilege I’ll never miss.

Let me continue to dream

until dreams become visions

and visions cause revolutions

giving me reasons

to wake up with coherence.

Don’t wake me

McCoy Creek Trail by Jan Wiezorek