Poet Gregory Orr once said, “the real task of a trauma victim–the task that makes life worth living again–is to reconnect the self to the world” (Orr, Gregory). In his piece, “Rebuilding a Life When Nothing Makes Sense,” Orr writes about his personal journey and experiences from a dark world to a light one, using poetry as a therapeutic tool. Orr focuses on the idea that despite facing extreme adversity, individuals can ultimately reconstruct their life paths, like he implemented. To support his argument, Orr uses tactics to organize the material, keep readers absorbed, and tell his unique life anecdotes. Gregory Orr’s “Rebuilding a Life When Nothing Makes Sense” is divided into three sections: “School,” “The Maidens of Hades,” and “The Thread …show more content…
Thus, such as in the sixth paragraph, Orr states, “I heard every thread in my web snap in a single instant.” And, in paragraph eighteen, “I died into it [underworld] as a skinny, alienated adolescent and was reborn as someone precariously balancing over his own inner abyss on three slender threads.” (Orr, Gregory). Orr also uses words that make his writing unique; like “invariably,” “commensurate,” and “underworld.” Orr’s use of such words and phrases allows readers to engage with his story and find interest in the overall argument that although it may seem impossible, individuals that experience adversity can reconstruct their life, or as Gregory Orr would say, rebuild the threads of their web, for the better. To prove his argument, Orr provides readers with various authentication options. In the beginning, Orr writes about his feelings of melancholy, gloom, and bleakness. Orr’s feelings provide readers with a sign that Orr had experienced severe adversity and trauma in his …show more content…
The article, “Discovering Inner Strengths: a Co-Facilitative Poetry Therapy Curriculum for Groups,” provides information about research conducted on a specific curriculum of poetry group therapy. Dubrasky et al. confirmed the efficacy of poetry therapy on the mental health of individuals by providing additional ways to heal (Dubrasky, Danielle et al.). A second research article, “Identifying the Mechanisms of Poetry Therapy and Associated Effects on Participants: a Synthesized Review of Empirical Literature,” addresses the topic of poetry therapy and discusses the specific aspects of poetry therapy that impact the mental health of individuals and its effectiveness. Alfrey et al. found that engaging, feeling, exploring, connecting, and transferring (“EFECT”) positively influenced participants’ thoughts, feelings, and actions, and this is a reason why poetry therapy has shown to be effective (Alfrey, Abigail et al.). In his work, Gregory Orr emphasized the concept of using poetry as a supplemental way to heal and eventually find inner
Diane Urban, for instance, was one of the many people who were trapped inside this horror. She “was comforting a woman propped against a wall, her legs virtually amputated” (96). Flynn and Dwyer appeal to the reader’s ethical conscience and emotions by providing a story of a victim who went through many tragedies. Causing readers to feel empathy for the victims. In addition, you began to put yourself in their shoes and wonder what you would do.
“Picking up the pieces of their shattered lives was very, very difficult, but most survivors found a way to begin again.” Once again, Helen was faced with the struggle of living life day-to-day, trying not to continue feeling the pain of her past.
In ‘The Turning’, mostly set in Angelus, some characters have never left the town while others return to the city to try to make sense of their lives and heal their wounds. All characters find disappointment or confirmation that they will never escape from their point of origin and that the painful experiences of childhood and adolescence isolate them in a phony reality. The short-story collection emphasises the idea that suffering is a pervasive part of the human condition and that moments of contentment are few, since life is an ongoing struggle, it also emphasises that the past shapes who you are. In the story 'Abbreviation', Melanie's comment that 'all the big things hurt, the things you remember. If it doesn't hurt it's not important'
These two novels spoke about real powerful momentous events that occur in the authors’ lives. The authors emerged from the shadows and transformed their mishaps into motivation of overcoming life’s hardships. These two stories exemplify ways of overcoming Life’s hardships and finding sense of oneself. These authors break their vows of silence to prove the beauty of a broken person. They both converse on racial discrimination, relationships with God, & coming into themselves.
In Amy Hempels’ Short Story “Going,” our journey with the narrator travels through loss, coping, memory, experience, and the duality of life. Throughout the story is the narrator’s struggle to cope with the passing of his mother, and how he transitions from a mixture of depression, denial, and anger, into a kind of acceptance and revelation. The narrator has lost his mother in a fire three states away, and proceeds on a reckless journey through the desert, when he crashes his car and finds himself hospitalized. Only his thoughts and the occasional nurse to keep him company. The narrator soon gains a level of discovery and realizations that lead to a higher understanding of the duality of life and death, and all of the experiences that come with being alive.
As one of America’s leading contemporary poet’s, Sharon Olds is known for the intense personal and emotional poetry that she writes. Her ability to intimately and graphically divulge details of her personal life allows readers to delve into the deepest parts of not only her mind, but of their own as well. Sharon Olds uses her writing to allow readers to experience the good and bad of life through her eyes, yet allows readers the interpretive freedom to define her works as they fit into their own lives. Olds’ ability to depict both wonderful and tragic events in stories such as “First Thanksgiving” and “Still Life in Landscape”with beautifully gruesome clarity allow readers a gritty real-life experience unlike any other.
Poetry is often created by an author’s need to escape the logical, as well as expressing feelings and other expressions in a tight, condensed manner. Hundreds of poets have impacted society throughout history through phenomenal poetry that, even with dark tones can be emotionally moving.
Adversity is the forerunner to kindness: a progenitor that encompasses the suffering of the raw, human experience. With the understanding of tribulations comes a greater empathy to share with others: the commonality among all living things that surpasses appearance and material. The renowned journalist William Allen White once stated, “If each man or woman could understand that every other human life is as full of sorrows, or joys, or base temptations, of heartaches and remorse as his own…how much kinder, how much gentler he would be”. This tragic lesson is apparent in both Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Ernest Gaines’ A Lesson Before Dying: liberation is only available to those who seek beyond the surface of a “monster” or “hog”,
In Pat Mora’s “Sonrisas,” A woman tells the audience that she lives in between two worlds: her vapid office workplace and a kitchen/break-room with family members or colleagues of her same heritage. Mora includes many sensory details to enrich our understanding of the speaker’s experience in both “rooms.” The speaker is content living in the “hallway” between the two rooms because she can put on a metaphorical mask, as mentioned in Jungian psychology, which fits what is acceptable to the different social society that is in each room of her life. Adrienne Rich on the other hand, is not content with peeking her head into the doorframes of the roles she must play in order to be accepted. In her poem, “Diving into The Wreck,” she pursues, in my opinion, a form of individuation by diving into the wreck of her inner consciousness to find who she is among the wreckage of the world and its effects on her. Both Pat Mora and Adrienne Rich explore the dangers of being defined by others and the rewards of exploring different worlds.
During the process of growing up, we are taught to believe that life is relatively colorful and rich; however, if this view is right, how can we explain why literature illustrates the negative and painful feeling of life? Thus, sorrow is inescapable; as it increase one cannot hide it. From the moment we are born into the world, people suffer from different kinds of sorrow. Even though we believe there are so many happy things around us, these things are heartbreaking. The poems “Tips from My Father” by Carol Ann Davis, “Not Waving but Drowning” by Stevie Smith, and “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop convey the sorrow about growing up, about sorrowful pretending, and even about life itself.
The beauty of life lies in its balance between success, happiness, misfortune, and one’s ability to rise from failures. Life naturally generates enjoyable, significant moments in which we tend to embrace and treasure. It is often desirable and convenient, however, to avoid facing the hardships brought upon us in life because accepting or persevering through such challenges can mark change and rude awakenings. In particular, the transition into adulthood often involves traumatic or distressing experiences similar to the ones that the protagonists Robbie Turner and Briony Tallis face in Atonement. For these characters, a significant traumatic event occurs as Robbie’s private, personal letter unintentionally makes its way into the hands of the naïve Briony. By highlighting this trauma and the character’s reactions in Part
Everyone handles traumatic experiences differently. Everyone mourns differently. Some cry, and rely on others to help them through these hard times. Others shrug it off, keeping to themselves. In “The Last Unmapped Places”, the author, Rebecca Zurkewitz, has the main character handling her traumas oddly.
As a child, Sharon Olds childhood was described as a “hellfire.” Growing up, she was told that she was going to hell. In Olds’ poem, she tries to express how she felt about her early childhood with an abusive father and relationships with her family. Olds wrote many poems about her relationship with her helpless, alcoholic father and her path to help deal with these memories and forgiving her father to loving the dying man. Most of Olds poems are about her journey from an abusive household to healing her past memories from a man she disgusted with. Her poems are ways of her speaking in loud tone describing domestic violence, sexuality, and family relationships. Like any poem, “His Stillness” the theme of the poem was about Olds getting close to her father w...
When reading or listening to poetry, the main objective for me is to feel moved. Happiness, longing, sadness are some of the feelings that can be achieved just by listening to others’ words. It is within these words that creates another world, or separates us from our own. Words all have a certain kind of attachment to them, so if used properly an author can stimulate a reader beyond belief.
We all remember these grey gloomy days filled with a feeling of despair that saddens the heart from top to bottom. Even though, there may be joy in one’s heart, the atmosphere turns the soul cold and inert. Autumn is the nest of this particular type of days despite its hidden beauty. The sun seems foreign, and the nights are darker than usual enveloped by a thrill that generates chills to travel through the spine leaving you with a feeling of insecurity. Nevertheless, the thinnest of light will always shine through the deepest darkness; in fact, darkness amplifies the beauty and intensity of a sparkle. There I found myself trapped within the four walls of my house, all alone, surrounded by the viscosity of this type of day. I could hear some horrifying voices going through my mind led by unappealing suicidal thought. Boredom had me encaged, completely at its mercy. I needed to go far away, and escape from this morbid house which was wearing me down to the grave. Hope was purely what I was seeking in the middle of the city. Outside, the air was heavy. No beautifully rounded clouds, nor sunrays where available to be admired through the thick grey coat formed by the mist embedded in the streets. Though, I felt quite relieved to notice that I was not alone to feel that emptiness inside myself as I was trying to engage merchant who shown similar “symptoms” of my condition. The atmosphere definitely had a contagious effect spreading through the hearts of every pedestrian that day. Very quickly, what seemed to be comforting me at first, turned out to be deepening me in solitude. In the city park, walking ahead of me, I saw a little boy who had long hair attached with a black bandana.