How to Read Poetry for Personal Growth (Patreon)

"I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul."

Today we are talking about how to read and appreciate poetry in service of powerful self-growth.

Topics of discussion include: poetry as a light in dark times, self-talk, memorisation techniques, expanding our comfort zones, mindsets for recitation, achieving lofty goals, poetry assignments, slow reading vs speed-reading, and much more.

Timestamps:

• 0:00 living the condition of poetry
• 1:30 poetry and returning to childhood
• 2:40 divine sight and light vs darkness
• 4:00 mythology and encoding wisdom
• 4:50 appreciating the rising of the sun
• 5:50 enduring dark times of the soul
• 7:00 Hamlet’s soliloquies as lifeline
• 8:00 can we read poetry for self-growth?
• 9:00 Oscar Wilde’s preface to Dorian Gray
• 11:30 moral, immoral and beautiful books
• 12:40 art for art’s sake vs moral value of art
• 15:00 finding ugly meanings in beautiful things
• 15:53 art as containing hope and meaning
• 17:00 the rage of Caliban seeing his reflection
• 19:00 art mirrors the spectator, and not life
• 19:57 Wilde’s ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol'
• 21:50 ‘my pain I could not feel’
• 23:45 poetry as prayer, mantra & self-talk
• 24:40 a mindset for how to recite poetry
• 26:00 on recitation without understanding
• 27:00 Nelson Mandela & ‘Invictus’
• 29:35 the power of self-talk in dark times
• 30:00 ‘I am the captain of my soul’
• 32:18 Shakespeare and the ‘Falstaff Cure’
• 33:00 ‘No Coward Soul is Mine’
• 37:20 poetry as space to lament
• 38:00 ‘Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night’
• 40:00 poetic musings upon our parents
• 42:00 dealing with the pain of losing loved ones
• 42:42 ‘the child is the father of the man’
• 44:30 the blessing of vicarious experience
• 46:00 making literature conversational
• 47:00 how to expand your comfort zone
• 48:00 using sound as an entrance to poetry
• 48:40 phanopoeia, melopoeia, logopoeia
• 50:00 on memorising Tennyson’s ‘The Eagle’
• 53:00 how to commit poetry to memory
• 54:30 the poetry of Gerard Manly Hopkins
• 56:15 the compressed power of great poetry
• 57:50 visualisation and the memory palace
• 1:02:00 minimal effective dose and lofty goals
• 1:03:30 memorising Milton and Shakespeare
• 1:04:20 why should we memorise poetry?
• 1:05:00 the modern day decay of imagination
• 1:06:28 storing desert island books in our soul
• 1:07:00 how to read without the book before us
• 1:08:00 how to make poetry appreciation a habit
• 1:09:00 analogue vs the digital world
• 1:11:00 when difficult literature becomes easy
• 1:12:04 treat your poets as walking companions
• 1:15:08 immersion, context, non-linear progress
• 1:17:00 structuring intensities of happiness
• 1:18:36 if you’re reading, it’s for you
• 1:19:30 great reading is great thinking and living
• 1:20:20 slow reading vs speed reading
• 1:24:24 some poetry reading assignments

Poems mentioned in our discussion are available in a volume called The Best Poems of the English Language: From Chaucer Through Robert Frost (here). 

Questions for You:

1) What poems would you like to have by heart?

2) Have you found any difficulties and joys that are specific to poetry?

3) What lofty reading goals would you love to accomplish?

Happy reading, folks!