There’s a reason that we speak of love, life, loss, death and other profound experiences in poetic verse. Poetry captures the very essence of our most awe-inspiring, most devastating and most intense feelings with images from the natural world. Poets revel in employing the metaphors of Earth’s birthing, abundance, dying and rebirthing to call us to our roots, to remind us of the rhythms of Earth, sky and sea. This “Mother-Tongue” that powers poetry belongs to the most ancient indigenous peoples whose lives were completely dependent upon and endowed with meaning by the alignment of stars, the turning of seasons and the shifting of sands and waterways. No wonder their gods and goddesses were worshiped in trees and mountains, rivers and oceans. And it is also no wonder that their descendants rely on the metaphors of sunrise and moonglow, birdsong and butterfly kisses to tap into what is most keenly felt as “true love,” or “the love of our lives.” We need what David Abram calls “the spell of the sensuous,” the tenderness of deep red roses and fields of purple heather, the intensity of crashing waves on the shore and the inspiration of scintillating sparkles of light in refreshing mountain pools to even come close to what we feel when overcome by love and gratitude. We need the poets to weave these images from creation together and give voice to the song that sings us into life when we are feeling most fully human.
Prairiewoods celebrates the tremendous gift of poetry for our souls with Artist-in-Residence Carol Tyx Dec. 6–8, 2019. Just when the daylight has wound down to practically candle-glow, we are offering Prairiewoods as a sacred place for reigniting the soul on this fantastic retreat weekend: Weaving Light in Words: Poetry as Spiritual Practice. To register online or learn more, please visit the retreat page.
—Laura Weber, Prairiewoods associate director and retreats coordinator