In the summer of 2023, I fell in love with poetry.

I was living overseas, struggling to navigate a job teaching English and a new life in a third-world country. Amidst the external and internal chaos, Saturdays were a reprieve. I’d mount my moped, drive to a nearby coffeehouse, and spend several hours reading and writing. My poetry – both what I read and wrote – became a deep solace. In it, I encountered beauty for which I’d never before found words, and I learned to pay attention to the many gifts of reality that I often missed.

Now, I do my best to drag my friends toward an appreciation of poetry, whether by texting random lines I love, printing copies of poems to stick in their university mailboxes, or quoting Cecilia Llompart when I see the moon.

Here are three reasons that I find poetry to be deeply valuable.

Poetry Expands Our Worlds

One of the most compelling reasons to read poetry is the way it sharpens our attention to realities that most of us miss.

Sometimes, it does this by highlighting a particular aspect of human consciousness. “Dulce Et Decorum Est,” by Wilfred Owen, for instance, depicts the desperate craze of soldiers navigating the war front; “After the Fire” in Ada Limón’s “The Carrying” draws a window into the grieved exhaustion of days following a hard cry; and Amy Munson’s “Palimpsest” showcases the deep longing of a woman who finds herself alone but must stake her confidence in the steadfast love of God. In each work, a feeling or experience comes to the fore, and the reader is able to momentarily put on another person’s eyes.

Other times, poetry pulls us to notice some aspect of the physical world that we’d otherwise gloss over, or else not realize as beautiful. I love, for example, the stark images Llompart uses in her poem “The Lord’s Prayer.” She speaks of “the rusty acoustics of a playground,” “the dry scrape of ceramic bowls ushered around a dinner table,” and “lips of cracked clay.” The focused descriptions, in her poems as in many others, guide us to notice aspects of reality that we typically miss.

Poetry Slows Us Down

Despite my deep love of poetry and relatively wide reading of it, I still often encounter poems that I don’t understand. Two of my now-favorite Emily Dickinson poems – “A wounded Deer – leaps highest –” and “I died for Beauty – but was scarce” – took me several reads to understand, and Llompart’s “Considerations” still baffles me. Alongside that, most poems I read don’t feel comprehensible the first time through, and I either must battle the words or give up the poem.

This might sound more like persistent frustration than a literary good, and sometimes it feels that way. Still, there’s something wonderful about having to fight for the meaning of a piece. First, the forcible pause presents a helpful balance to the rush of most other modern life. We’re used to immediate understanding, especially when reading, and the sometimes slow slog of poetry counteracts that.

Second, the meaning of a poem often tastes all the more sweet for the battle that it took to obtain it. There’s a thrill in that Aha! moment when you finally focus on the right phrase, or process a word that you previously glossed over, or understand how the last line relates to the first.

Poetry Shows Virtue as Beautiful

Not all poems accomplish (or try to accomplish) the presentation of virtue, but when they do, the beauty of the poem makes the depiction of virtue all the more powerful.

I love, for example, the determined nobility of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s soldiers in “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” His depictions of the soldiers’ circumstance (“Cannon to right of them, / Cannon to left of them, / Cannon in front of them / Volleyed and thundered”), alongside his high praise of their endurance (“When can their glory fade? / O the wild charge they made! / All the world wondered”) highlights their great courage in the face of death.

In a less grand, but no less significant, way, Frederick William Faber’s “Desire of God” upholds the beauty of a soul that is entirely immersed in the desire for God’s presence. More than once, that poem has inspired me to pursue the virtue of chasing hard after God. It showcases the beauty of a heart that focuses steadily on the presence of God, and in doing so, it prompts me to pursue God more committedly myself.

Where to Start?

If you’d like to get into poetry, there are several places you can start. “The Best Poems of the English Language” or “150 Most Famous Poems” offer a broad introduction to poetry.

Christian Wiman and Ada Limón (the current U.S. poet laureate) are some good recent poet names to watch. Personally, I love Munson’s “Yes, Thorn,” and I adore Llompart’s “The Wingless.”

For more traditional, devotional poetry, Leland Ryken has developed a beautiful collection of spiritual hymns and poems, along with helpful commentary in “The Soul in Paraphrase.”

Wherever you start, be tenacious! I sincerely hope that poetry yields for you the joys it has yielded to me.

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This article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal.

Image credit: Pxhere