The Healing Power of Poetry

...Schools across the land have cut arts, music, and sports programs as standardized testing becomes the end-all and be-all of modern so-called education...

...We don't need multibillion dollar pharmaceutical companies or insurance agencies to address "healing" in static and monetary terms, and therefore take most of this out of our hands...

...Here's an excerpt from a poem I wrote about that experience: WENDY BORN HOLLANDER These poems were graffiti scrawls along the alleys & trash-strewn tunnels of my body, the metaphoric methadone for the heroin hurling through my bloodstream, the lifeline I already had inside and didn't know...

...Already, the men whose eyes are attuned to the future are making known their insights and gaining attention...

...From now on, man can avail himself, if he so chooses, of the help and experience of Us, his Elder Brothers, Who stand ready to aid and inspire when called upon to do so...

...We need people like Lawrence Spann, the root doctors and seed spreaders of an immensely hopeful and socially just future for a spiritually lost and imaginatively vacant and ailing world...

...Gradually, a transformation will take place in human thinking and, inevitably, the old will give way to a new and saner approach to the problems of life...

...Gone, forever, the urge to dominate, subdue and exploit the resources and territory of smaller and weaker nations...

...Left to himself, this period for man would be long indeed...

...I propose that city, county, state, and federal governments consider policies that would provide adequate spaces, subsidized rents, and other assistance to independent bookstores, cultural spaces, and expression therapy programs before we lose our creative outlets to the big stores and transnational corporations remaking the world in their images...

...The poetry became my medicine for the healing of my traumatized and troubled soul...

...Thus it is today as man* assesses what is relevant and needful to preserve for future use, and what is dispensable in the light of his growing awareness and insight...

...Thus is this a time without precedent, when the Helpers are at hand in every situation, careful to maintain man's divine free will, but eagerly willing to give of Their age-long wisdom and hard-fought-for experience and knowledge...

...I began a conscious, active, and dense revolutionary life...

...We have entered a dark and unimaginative time...

...Much that today seems important will pass away, to be replaced by simpler and more natural ways of living and relationship...

...Gone, too, will be the intolerance which so disfigures the human spirit today...

...Five years ago he started the Literature, Arts, and Medicine Program (LAMP) at the Sutter Medical Center in his hometown...

...San Antonio poet Naomi Shihab Nye had this to say in a letter she sent to the Sutter Medical Center administrators: "As a visitor to the program a few years ago, I felt it to be the most ambitious, innovative, meaningful, and deeply inspiring program I have encountered in my thirty-three years as an itinerant writer working in hundreds of situations and institutions...

...When I was eighLuis J. Rodriguez is author of "Hearts & Hands: Creating Community in Violent Times" and co-founder of Tia Chucha's Bookstore & Cultural Center in Los Angeles...

...These poems were pool sticks, darkened gangways, a swirl of sunrise after the graveyard shift, a blood-black yelling behind torn curtains, a child screaming and nobody coming to help...

...Recently, however, he sent me an e-mail to say the hospital has cut out LAMP, including his salary, in the midst of a major building expansion and budget crisis...

...The Forward Path — Preparatory to every shift in human consciousness there is a pause, a moment of stillness, in which the achievements of the past are reappraised and, if found wanting, discarded...

...This is why LAMP and programs like it are important and must be safeguarded...

...Soon after attending this poetry reading, I quit gangs...

...Men and nations will seek to live by the rule of law and the requirements of peace and security for all men...

...Lawrence Spann of Sacramento knows this first hand...

...Cultural spaces and independent bookstores are closing around the country due to gentrification, highend development, and increased rents...

...In their place will grow a new realism, an understanding of the inter-connectedness of all men and of their mutual rights and obligations...

...In Los Angeles alone over the past five years, we've lost socially healing institutions like the Midnight Special Bookstore, Luna Sol Cafe, Bohemia Books, Dutton's Books, Carla's Passion Gallery, and others...

...I agree...

...The outlines, as yet, are dim and indistinct, yet sufficiently clear, to those whose eyes are keen, to give assurance and hope that man is awakening to his true identity and purpose, and, despite the vicissitudes of the time, well set on his forward path...

...I have a friend who once taught band in a Compton middle school with no instruments...

...Soon, the beginning of such a process will make its appearance...

...But it does speak to our own power to change and renew as people, poor or otherwise...

...I had never witnessed such a delivery of words and ideas...

...If we expand the concept of healing, we find that we all have our own medicine already inside ourselves...

...on war per month, it's no wonder it's hard to make sensible choices these days...

...Words are words, but when they come together in a certain rhythm, conveying layers of meaningful images and narrative, they transport a listener to other dimensions of existence, of knowledge, of healing...

...I'm convinced no therapy sessions, no psychosomatic drugs, no institution could have done as much...

...We need this more than ever: creative and inexpensive options out of war, violence, hate, and fear...

...These days, programs that are good seem to get cut...

...The concept of education—from its Latin root "to draw out," as a way to bring out the light, imagination, and innate interests and passions of engaged learners—is being pushed aside to create legions of sedate consumers...

...Gone, you may be sure, will be the blasphemy of millions dying needlessly of want in the midst of overflowing plenty...

...teen—while still on heroin and somewhat in the street life—I attended my first poetry reading in Berkeley, featuring Jose Montoya (Chi-cano), David Henderson (African American), and Pedro Pietri (Puerto Rican...

...One can only wonder about the level of humanity prevailing in our country and our world...

...Thousands of lives in 400 writing groups were touched through this unique therapy program, including many terminally ill cancer and heart disease patients...

...A year later, I got clean from drugs...

...Thus, in a fiery cauldron, the shape of the future is being fashioned now...

...More and more, many will turn to them for assurance and guidance, and in this way the new thought will take root...

...With $12 billion being spent by the U.S...

...I wrote vignettes and verses in jail at age sixteen...

...This concept is ancient—going back to when the Psalms first soothed the saints, or when Homer first recited Odysseus's adventures, or when the Griots of Africa first held audiences in the spell of their stories and poems...

...That's why Lawrence Spann's work is crucial...

...This may not seem as important as jobs, housing, quality schools, or full quality health care for everyone— which we need and must continue to fight for...

...I myself recalled my own transformation from gang member and drug addict in my teens through poetry and intellectual/political engagement...

...Perhaps their bodies weren't entirely cured, but their souls were made vibrant, energized, and wholly alive enough to help them live out their final days with dignity, peace, and completion...

...Many are the experiments which he would require to make, and many are the possibilities of error which could occur, ere the right path was found and the right steps taken...