By making us stop for a moment, poetry gives us an opportunity to think about ourselves as human beings on this planet and what we mean to each other.

...the poem is a way to see the truth and in that process healing change becomes possible.

Recovering the poet strengthens the healer...a lot of healing lies in the recovery of a personal sense of meaning, that capacity which enables us to endure difficulties, to find and draw on unsuspected strength.

Poetry is a natural medicine; it is like a homeopathic tincture derived from the stuff of life itself -- your experience. Poems distill experience into the essentials.  Our personal experiences touch the common ground we share with others.  The exciting part of this process is that poetry used in this healing way helps people integrate the disparate, even fragmented parts of their life.

Poetry provides guidance, revealing what you did not know you knew before you wrote or read the poem.  This moment of surprising yourself with your own words of wisdom or of being surprised by the poems of others is at the heart of poetry as healer.

You must give birth to your images. They are the future waiting to be born . . . .

Writing poetry together heals loneliness.  What is true for someone on the deepest level is often true for us all.

You make a poem with words--but you also build an interior place when you write, a place where your intuitive voice may awaken and thrive.

A poem or even a fragment of a poem may serve as the balancing point which your eyes focus on in order to walk over difficult terrain.