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When we're grieving, when we're broken-hearted, and when we find ourselves struggling to understand the things we're feeling, we long for the connection poetry can provide. To find the right poem at that crucial moment, one capable of expressing our situation with considerably more elegance than we could muster ourselves, is to discover a powerful sense of complicity, and that precious realization- I'm not the only one who feels like this. In the years since he first had the idea of prescribing short, powerful poems for all manner of spiritual ailments, William Sieghart has taken his Poetry Pharmacy around the length and breadth of Britain, into the pages of theGuardian, onto BBC Radio 4 and onto the television, honing his prescriptions all the time. This pocket-sized book presents the most essential poems in his dispensary- those which, again and again, have really shown themselves to work. Whether you are suffering from loneliness, lack of courage, heartbreak, hopelessness, or even from an excess of ego, there is something here to ease your pain.… (more)
User reviews
Sieghart explains in his introduction how the idea of his Poetry Pharmacy
Naturally, there is a subjective view to such things, and I didn't always feel a particular poem was apposite, or that it would necessarily be helpful or therapeutic, but that's shaped by my own feeling-world and frame of reference. On balance, I think Sieghart hit the mark much more often than he missed.
I'm not sure how seriously Sieghart takes his idea of prescribing "pills" of poetry as if they would have a defined, consistent, and predictable effect upon different individuals. I'd assume that's not his position (and I'd disagree with him if it is), however, in a social setting that adheres to the Western medical-model of health and well-being, his pharmacy concept may be a gateway through which people can engage with poetry, and hopefully find a reflective space in which they can better understand themselves and the wellsprings of their distress.
A very brief introduction and then the poem would have been a lot better -