Without poetry, and especially a poetic perspective of living, our insatiable hunger over-consumes the world. Ironically, this threatens our very survival to put food on our plates.
This is because a poetic orientation to nourishment and beauty allows us to satiate ourselves inwardly without having to possess or materially consume the source of awe and beauty—which, ironically again—destroys what inspires and gives life. More, when our hearts and souls are immaterially nourished by the world, it impassions us to materially protect it.
Allowing ourselves to be awestruck by an amaryllis or antelope, a baby rhinoceros or grove of redwoods, nourishes us inwardly without having to capture or kill and hang it on our wall, where lifeless, it ceases to inspire. Beholding, breathing in, and digesting the life-giving refreshment of a forest, along with its thousands of other enchantments, nourishes our very essence and inspires ineffable gratitude—as well as our passion to protect it.
At their heart, these experiences are poetic: experiencing beauty, awe, and reverie via material things as inspirational symbols for fulfillment, rather than mere objects to fill us via concretized consumption. This is why the images of poetry and visual art are so valuable: they nourish and enchant us without our having to destroy the things themselves.
In a culture that rapes and consumes to no end, everything must become monetized and materialized. Poetry, which preserves the non-literal and inexplicable, is therefore marginalized and deemed unessential . . . so that beauty and the sacred can continue to be fed to the endless appetite of the economy.
For these very reasons, a poetic perspective is essential to safeguard the natural world, to preserve not only our own survival but the thriving of all ecosystems upon which we rely.
So please, don’t ever tell me that poetry is non-essential. It’s only disposable when our inner lives have deteriorated to the point that we destroy the world trying recover a feeling of joy and belonging, which is impossible.
—from The Nourish Practice
