I sat looking at the faces that had been meeting mine for the past four Saturdays....
In a Divinatory Poetics session, we read together—the poetry of masters, the masterworks of artists who have perfected their craft. We read them slowly—silently, and then aloud. Each individual voice, with its unique cadence and tone, feels its way through the metaphors and imagery, the fields of emotional color.
Then we write; without censorship or second thought, (as much as possible). And finally, we converse, wedding our voices with the language that inspired them. It’s an imaginal journey—and the landscapes we invoke together are so rich they often give me chills.
The revelation of the nature of poetical magic isn't about the need to “produce” anything for some future time—if or when we become ‘good’ (professional?) at it. This is not writing to perform. This is not writing to impress.
It is writing as medium—an opening for our unique, raw voice, as it is. Free of planning, tweaking and editing. The essence of the creative act is being invited – and allowing, receiving that invitation – the self momentarily forgotten.
We acknowledge the one, (as often within as without) who wants to perform, the one who panics about grammar, the one who wants to appear grand, unapproachable, polished, cool, (immortal)—but we don’t let them decide for us. We don’t follow them.
We enter into a poem together. Sometimes someone drops in a tidbit about the life or historical context of a poet, a reflection about the etymology of a word, or something about what the work provoked for them. It is exciting—and often surprising—how profound and vivid the insights are. How uniquely individual. How mutually appreciated. There is a quality to the conversation; a rhythm of silence and utterance that arrives when we’re truly listening and witnessing together.
Gathering in poetics feels like gathering together in divine companionship. We utter our words in the circle, joining voices that speak from what is bleedingly alive—from what’s close to our bones. We add tiny anecdotes, fragments, reflections – and the landscape materializes. Into the circle come waves of insight—or revelation; the raw and uncensored core of human vulnerability and experience.
Poetry is orgasmic, in the way something true can move through you like a current—full-bodied, unstoppable. Because when something pierces that deeply—truth, grief, joy, memory—it doesn’t stay in the mind. It moves through the body.
In that session, I realized—vividly—how the act of gathering together in the spirit of divine language, trusting one another enough to risk our own underground gifts—our own raw voices—into the shared cauldron, is itself the reason and the revelation.
What I hadn’t fully realized until that morning was that these are the simple ingredients for a true forum of poetical experience.
This is the why of poetry.
Simply: sitting together, reading from a ‘book of revelations’ and folding, weaving, tossing in our own voices—our angle on the thing.
No one is up on a stage performing while the others sit obediently in seats (stifling yawns), waiting for our turn, or our friend’s, or else waiting to hear the famously recognizable so we can bask in our familiarity with something the world seems to cherish. No performance. No voyeurism. Just showing up and bringing our grit to the table. Investing something of ourselves - risking that.
Risking can mean remaining silent too.
Chills aren’t reserved for the polished and published, because this work is rooted in the vividness of our own experience—in our own creative process: our considered risk, our revelations, staying with expectation, boredom, rage–all of it–in dialog. At this table, we allow the masters to provoke us, to catalyze something. And then we write from that place. Without thinking (as much as possible)—or perhaps better said: without heeding thought.
Without following thought, as in meditation.
In sitting with poems, in sitting with each other, I’m reminded again and again that attention is a sacred act. And where we place it matters. This is why gathering in poetics feels like a counter-spell—because it returns us to what's real, what's close, what's ours to tend. It makes me think that one of the most radical creative acts right now might be this:
Turning—even temporarily—away from the spectacle in Washington D.C. Turning away from the media—at least for a little while, dear people!—And turning back toward the immediacy our own lives and the lives that touch ours.
There’s a kind of cowardice in constantly diverting our attention to the theatrics of media and televised politics. And it takes a certain courage to relate non-defensively to the actual elements of our experience: the words we choose, how we use our bodies and our eyes, what we do with our time–to turn toward our own ‘villages’, and the beings in them.
I’m saying: focus on where the love in your own hands, heart, and voice is actually felt and heard—where what you do is tangible in a way you can feel, see, and recognize…And dare to do this with those who do not echo your own sentiments, (if you insist on curating your family, things eventually become incestuous—in one way or another).
Sometimes the most radical act is the tiniest one: the willingness to silently wish a stranger well. Turn your eyes, your hands, your mind, your mouth to the places where you can truly stir the waters. Where you can speak and be questioned. Where you can question in return.