Poetry gives us the feels

Thinkings and poems 1 Minute

Photo0261 2.jpghttps://www.mhpbooks.com/science-has-now-proved-that-poetry-gives-us-the-feels/

 

 

by 

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
(Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire)

A splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning
(William Carlos Williams, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus)

Jenny, your mind commands
kingdoms of black and white
(Lisel Mueller, Reading the Brothers Grimm to Jenny)

 

I’ve always been able to remember certain lines of poetry — words that, once read, imprinted themselves onto my brain without my even trying to remember them. And beyond that, poems that have literally made me shiver, or cry, or tingle, or sob, or reach for my favorite teddy bear to help contain the feelings. (I’m looking at you, Kenneth Koch).

For anyone out there like me, we can rest assured that science has our back. A recent study by a quintet of German and Norwegian researchers, published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, makes the claim that poetry, when we hear it read aloud, elicits emotional, physical, and neurological responses not too dissimilar from those produced by music. Said another way, poetry can make the hair rise on the back of your neck, and now we can prove it.

 

Unknown's avatar

Published by Katherine

Poetry writer and author

Published

4 thoughts on “Poetry gives us the feels”

    1. I can remember certain poems like certain pieces of music.Also bits of the Bible:I will lift up mine eyes to the Hills though they did not mean the Langdale Pikes.But I know what they meant

      1. I suppose the interesting question is “what make a line memorable?” Why are so many Shakespeare lines memorable, for example? It’s the same with musical themes. There seem to be ‘resonances (for want of a better word) in the brain. I just hope that advertisers don’t discover too much about them 🙂

      2. Is it the emotional range and the vocabulary? I find some TS Eliot affects me that way.And some lines in Ariel where the rider is at one with the horse and with everything including the sun.
        “The cry of the child
        Melts in the wall”
        The fact she has a baby but now she does not hear his cry.She’s carried away.In some ways it is a perfect poem. remembering that she did not know then she was soon to die.She wanted to be one with everything but only God can be that,I imagine

Comments are closed.