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Introduction: Poems Have Magic
by Ron Carnell

Contrary to childhood aphorisms, words have power. They can hurt us far more than sticks and stones, and too often they do. But words also have the power to heal. They can help make whole that which the rigors of life and time have broken. That, I believe, is the Magic of Poetry.

This discovery came to me slowly.

Three years ago, before starting the Passions in Poetry web site, my only insights about poetry were personal ones. I had been writing poems since my early teens, a span of about thirty-five years, and I long ago recognized the power they had in my own life. Verse allowed me to communicate, to a select few, things that otherwise would have remained unspoken. I didn't know it then, and wouldn't realize it for many more years, but there was a chain wrapped around my heart, padlocked against both intrusion and extrusion. Pen and paper were the only keys allowing me a brief respite from my prison.

When I impulsively posted my poetry on the Internet in late 1998 and invited others to join me, I discovered I wasn't alone. The chain that bound my heart wasn't the short length I had imagined it to be, but rather extended around the globe, wrapping itself around the hearts of many. Today, I suspect "many" is probably "all." I think that same chain encircles all of humanity, stopping at each heart along the way to twist and twine and bind. For some it becomes a wall that must be surmounted, for others it becomes a dark prison, but none of us remain untouched. Everyone struggles to communicate.

Poetry certainly isn't the only key that can unlock that chain, but I'm convinced it's a significant one. My first clue came within weeks of opening Passion's virtual doors and from a very unlikely venue.

Four Weddings and a Funeral

Within a few days of each other, I received three different emails from visitors to Passions, looking for the poem that was recited at the funeral in this 1994 movie (it was Funeral Blues by W.H. Auden). That was my first "poem in a movie" request, but it certainly wasn't the last. From Pablo Neruda in "Patch Adams," to Dylan Thomas in Rodney Dangerfield's "Back to School", to William Ernest Henley in "Dead Poet's Society," hardly a week goes by without someone writing in hopes of finding something they heard that touched their hearts. They often forget the movie title, they forget the story and characters, but they find they cannot forget the poem.

The requests aren't limited to movies and television, though. I get even more from people looking for a poem they heard as a child or adolescent, perhaps from a parent or a teacher. They rarely remember the title, even more rarely the author, and often can give only a few words and a remembered sense of awe as clues.

People, I think, look for long-lost poetry in much the same way they look for long-lost friends, and maybe even for the same reasons.

Why Do You Read Poetry?

Poetry, of course, opens a path of communication between the author and the reader, allowing us to learn something of the human condition through the experiences of another person. And that is a powerful reason to read poetry. The same is true, however, of prose, and also of theatre, paintings, sculpture, and music.

Poetry is perhaps unique in that it often opens more than a single line of communication. The author talks to the reader, yes, but I think the reader also does a little of the talking. To friends, to family, to the world outside themselves. "This is how I have felt, too," the reader says. Through the words and truths of the poet, the reader is also set free from that great length of chain binding the heart.

Writers write because they feel an enormous, overwhelming need to communicate. Many could no more stop writing than they could stop breathing, and many more could care less if anyone ever read their words. They write for themselves. They use pen and paper to all too briefly free themselves from the chain that binds us all. In this, because all are similarly bound, I think all of us are poets. Everyone feels the need, even if it remains yet unrecognized.

Some writers go beyond. They discover that communication is a two-way street, and they struggle diligently to learn better ways to impart understanding. Their first goal remains the same, to free themselves, but they realize that in reaching that goal they may also have the power to free others. Thus are born the Shakespeares, the Keats, the Nerudas.

There is a great chain that wraps all of humanity, leading from one breast to the next, locking our hearts from each other and strangling communication.

Poetry, very simply, is the magic that can transform that chain into a connection, a path that travels from heart to heart, from person to person, showing us we are not so very different.

"This is how I have felt, too."