Poetry as Medicine Questionnaire: Ryan Collins

O Happiest of Saturdays to you. October is healing me right up: the house smells of sage, my toddler is wearing a flannel shirt (if you didn't know already, this is goddamn adorable), and I've been reading this: 

Good, good stuff. 

And another gift: some words from Ryan Collins, who was good enough to answer the Poetry as Medicine Questionnaire. Ryan is the author of three chapbooks, most recently Dear Twin Falls (H_NGM_N, 2013).  His poems have appeared in American Letters & Commentary; Asymptote; Black Clock; Columbia Poetry Review; DIAGRAM; Forklift, Ohio; Handsome; iO: A Journal of New American Poetry; PEN Poetry Series; Spork; Transom; the Hell Yes Press cassette anthology 21 Love Poems; & many other places.  He is the Executive Director of the Midwest Writing Center & an English instructor at St. Ambrose University, both in Davenport, IA.  He plays drums in The Multiple Cat & curates the SPECTRA Poetry Reading Series in Rock Island, IL, where he lives.

He's a wonderful dude, and here are his answers.

1.  Can poetry be medicine? As in:

Can it heal our bruised-up world or our bruised-up brains?

Can it foment revolution?

Can it make us want to go out and fight another day?

Can it be prayer?

Yes poetry is medicine.  Poetry heals.  At least it can.  It does for me & a lot of other people I know.  I think this is evidenced best when there are moments of tragedy—local or global—and people turn to poetry.  For example: 9/11 turned a great many people toward poetry—as a means of expressing how they felt, as memory, as recovery, as a way of trying to address or understand in some way this terrible event that even now, 12 years after, seems unfathomable, beyond understanding.  I think this impulse is deeply humane, genetic.  We are trying to understand our damage & heal after it via language.  Saying the names of our wounds releases them somewhat from our bodies, allows us to recover while still recognizing that which almost killed us.  It also allows us a medium to put our minds & our lives & our hearts & all the triumphs & pain they endure out in the world, into a sort of healing community, if you will, where we see that our alienations are shared, that we are not alone as our alones would like us to believe       

2.  If so, what poets/poems are your medicine?

Dear lord.  There are so many.  Let’s start w/ a friend: Matt Hart.  All of his work is really important to me, but in particular his poem “Amplifier to Defender”—it’s one of those great ars poeticas, a poem that I turn to & read aloud w/ the full force of my lungs anytime I feel in doubt or beaten down or anywhere near giving up on something (or myself).  What Matt says about the possibilities/capacities of language & its resulting materials, about living attentively & enthusiastically & completely, about friendships & relationships & how language operates to build & sustain them, just resonates so deep in my bones that the poem has a very real restorative effect on my whole being.  Here’s a video of him reading it, so you can see/hear what I mean.

Others: Rebecca Wee’s Uncertain Grace is especially important to me, for its compassion & vividness & treatment of loss, grief & everything that comes with them.  It’s a briilant book & she has been my poetry guardian angel for years.  Frank O’Hara’s “To the Harbormaster,” Kenneth Loch’s “Some General Instructions,” Joshua Clover’s “Union Pacific” (really his collection Madonna Anno Domini is one of my all-time favorites), Arielle Greenberg’s Given, Dorothea Lasky’s AWE.  Anything Kiki Petrosino writes.  Wow, there are just too many heroes to name check.  I think Dean Young’s book on poetics, The Art of Recklessness, offers a way of looking at creative process that provides revelation, surprise, prayer, communion, exuberance, bewilderment, joy & pretty much everything I find terrific & healing about poetry & poetic practice.     

3. How do you make use of this medicine? 

Practice—writing, being generative w/ language I have to be very therapeutic, especially when I’m writing away from myself.  I’ve been playing drums for most of my life & I find the kind of mindset I’m able to get into when I’m playing drums is very similar to that when I’m writing.  Obviously the mental/physical demands are very different, but the ease & relaxing of my mind are very similar.  When I’m not doing at least one of these things on a very regular basis, I get swampy, lethargic, grump-city & feel mostly blah about everything.  I read as much as I can, but working/grading essays takes much of that space.  Poems are great in this context b/c if I’m dragging ass, or my head is in some bad space, I’ll break out some poems I love, read them out loud & I feel better. 

Medicine Poet Mike Bayles

Friends, I hope you enjoy this poem by Mike Bayles. Mike is  a lifelong Midwest resident and the author of Threshold, a book of poetry. He is a widely-published poet and short story writer and has contributed to other community blog projects. WVIK Public Radio has featured his writing.


Town Siren Sounds at Noon
by Mike Bayles

Town takes pause at noon to the sound. Mother in park

watches daughter on swing hang onto chains, but touches sky.

She wants to be an astronaut. The mother wants to be

a nurse in the city while she thinks about past lives. The girl

 hangs onto chain, and she closes her eyes to see stars.

The mother wonders how she can let go. The dog on a leash                              

watches waving limbs and wispy clouds. He wants to be a bird.

A bartender pours a drink for a construction worker having a liquid

lunch. He wants easy conversation. She glances at the TV, where

the weathercaster talks about warm days and endless skies for another

week. Her children are grown, but she holds onto summer dreams.

She wants to be a star while the construction worker wants another drink.

The owner stands at the grill wants another cut of meat. The siren sounds

in town, announcing time, while traffic moves at leisurely pace.                  

Medicine Poet Dan Holst

Today, I'm sharing a poem sent to us from Dan Holst. Dan is a twenty-one year veteran of the United States Air Force. While serving in Italy during Operation Allied Force, he bought a compilation of America’s 100 Greatest Poems. He admired the love of Anne Bradstreet, shared the demons of Poe, and found kinship between all warriors with Claude McKay's words: if we must die–oh, let us nobly die.  His love of poetry was born.

ZERO — ZERO — ZERO

Across the Nebulae
A battle through the eagle's eye
We fought the enemy down
But they’re not gone
Intruded through and upon
Fighting hand-to-hand
Through death, wounds, and scars
I’m told we won.

DESTRUCT SEQUENCE ONE

My crew fought bravely
Many died
Now I limp them home
Or what remains of them
They will heal but my soul is scarred
Systems askew, I will never again
Fly true.

DESTRUCT SEQUENCE TWO

Within me remains an intruding creation
I will fight this sickening infiltration.
An engineering dysfunction
Puts my weapons in disarray
It de-energizes my core
Depress a switch
Sparks flying without integrity. 

DESTRUCT SEQUENCE THREE

I arrive safely — what they say is home
Release my crew
But home was out there
Dodging fire
Winning every fight
Yet desire remains
An uncontrollable flame
So I return to space
For one final flare against this fiercest enemy
I do what I must
I will be free!
Please remember...
It's just a matter of my internal security. 

Medicine Poet Amber Williams

Tonight's poem was written by Amber Williams. Amber was born and raised in the Quad Cities, with a brief detour in Albion, Michigan, where she received a BA in Anthropology.  She lives and works in Davenport, Iowa, where her home seconds as my collage studio. Amber is a member of the Desoto Pottery Studio in Rock Island, IL.

Such Things

I remember long

ago, before my

Atheism kicked in,

when Grandpa took

me on the back

of his four-wheeler

through the woods

behind the old

farm house. 

I asked him

who rested this tree

in the crotch of that one,

keeping the path

conveniently accessible. 

He said

it fell that way.

I looked up,

as we rode under,

knowing he was

wrong.  Clearly,

someone had a hand

in the placement

of such things.

Medicine Poet Salvatore E. Marici

Hello friends! Today's words are gifted to us by Quad Citian Salvatore E. Marici. Sal's poetry has appeared in Circle Magazine, Off Channel, Slow Trains, Descant and Sweet Lemons 2: International Writings with a Sicilian Accent (Legas, 2010), Toasted Cheese, Descant and others. He has a chapbook Mortals, Nature and their Spirits (Ice Cube Press). His second collection, which will be a full book from Ice Cube Press, is forthcoming in 2014. 

Sal has this to say about this poem's medicine:

When you enter a Labyrinth you take knowledge, when you leave you have wisdom.  This is medicine. When words show music, taste, smell, touch and sight that is also medicine, regardless where the collection of words takes me.

Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary

Swamp deities carved cameos

out of the brown and green landscape.

Strangler Figs’ tendrils

drape trunks. Cypress knees shelter

small fish. Snowy Egrets wait to snap. 

Baby alligators bask on floating lettuce.

Vapor bathes in stillness, a sweat lodge

without a dome.

Perspiration flushes my ego and drips

into overlapping circles

of birth-to-birth as I pray these

primeval gods and goddesses stay while

I walk this boardwalk

with labyrinth like turns.

Thank you Sal! Incidentally, you can find a walkable labyrinth at the Prairiewoods Spiritual Center in Hiawatha Iowa. Click on the link above to take a gander at their lovelies. Walk that circle, and find your center. Just like Sal.

A Quote

Heddy Hustedde, the lovely librarian who brings poems to the stacks of the Bettendorf Public Library, sends this quote our way:


Pythagoras said that the most divine art was that of healing.  And if the healing art is most divine, it must occupy itself with the soul as well as the body; for no creature can be sound so long as the higher part of it is sickly.

-Apollonius of Tayana


Get thee to the BPL! Check out some poetry to heal your higher parts! It's a great place to hang out and browse all the beautiful books and people watch all the beautiful people. 

Heya! Guess what?? In a day + some hours, this will happen!

Be hijacked and medicined by some Matt Hart on this beautiful, beautiful afternoon. I, for one, am most grateful for his reminder that: what I got/ I got/ by sitting still and laughing with my little girl. Listen to a few poems here.

So, I'm going to sign off and go sit in some leaf-shade with my little love, getting healed.

See you on Thursday, friends!

In Which I Start Out Sour But Get to Good Times at the End

We’ve got some serious healing to do.

I won’t begin this blog with a laundry list of the horrors and challenges and injustices we’ve managed to cram onto our pale blue dot of a home. So. Let’s just do this:

Think of the real-life thing that scares the bejeezus out of you (climate change, dying bees, genocide…dangity-dang there’s some laundry).

If you’re me and you think of this thing, your chest is sure to be cement-block heavy, your throat is sure to be tight, and your mind is most sure to be so, so tired of knowing this known thing. And, if you’re a poet, I think you may have come upon a day wherein you wondered how the heck a poem could possible help this breaking, broken, mud-storm of a place.

I don’t know where you are with that question. I don’t know if you asked it at all. I don’t know if you asked it, then careened right past with fists a-swingin’. I did not.

I had a couple years of some pretty deep sadness that looked (and I’m not proud) mostly like this: drunkenly night swimming in Lake Superior and learning everything there is to know about End Time predictions. This was not cute. This is no way to live.

I surfaced and decided it was best for me and the planet to learn to farm and to stop reading conspiracy theory websites. And then, wonder of wonders, I had a baby.

Friends, here’s where the poetry returns.

Because I’m not a farmer. While I will happily grow a yard full of edibles, and while I’ll happily worship the ground my farmer-friends restore, I’m not a farmer. I suddenly had this son who was a citizen of the world, and I wanted to show him a world worth saving. Which meant I wanted to show him the beauty. Which meant that I needed to see the beauty.

Which meant my run-off-the-grid-with-a-shotgun inclined brain needed to get healed. 

Wendell Berry did that. Goodness, did he heal my mind, that poet who is also a farmer and most certainly a medicine man (there will be much to say about him in the future, on this here blog).

And there was my answer: poetry does have a place in this fight. Poetry turns the fists into palms. Poetry is a battle cry, and poetry is medicine.

So now, when I ask myself what medicine do I have to give? To my son, to the dirt, to society? The answer is never, ever despair. It is never fear (though I still struggle with both).  I want to join the fight with my huge-drum love and my keen-seeing hope. 

Poetry is what gets me there.