Let’s face it: most of us spend entirely too much time on social media.
I try not to blame myself for it. When I’m at work, I’m too busy to truly interact with others, and when I finally get home—cook, do the dishes, start laundry, fold the things I forgot about in the dryer—I’m often too exhausted to interact in more than grunts or nods at my husband as we go through our evening rituals.
But social media is different. It’s there when I’m ready, and—unlike students or colleagues—I can abandon it when I need to, like those Gigapets we all had in the late ’90s.
Last week, in the midst of this political turmoil, one of my good friends—herself a poet as well—had this to say: It is time for those of us who think that by writing we are doing something to step up our game. It is time to do something that really creates change!
I can certainly understand her framework and perspective.
The world seems upside down, and it’s an upside down that’s unquestionably, pointedly cruel toward Black, brown, Indigenous, LGBTQ+ folks, and women.
I can also see why—in the depths of our modern exhaustion—we feel a sense of urgency born of the guilt that we’re not doing enough, an emotion likely— and ironically—tied to our exhaustion.
But I must differ with my friend.
Should we be doing something? Yes!
Should we be petitioning our senators, writing our congresspeople, marching in the streets, boycotting companies, and volunteering to be board members and laborers of nonprofits out here doing the good work? Absolutely we should.
But writing poetry is something.
A deep, personal, powerful something that does something big.
As I tell my students, If you can write a poem, you can change the world.
Ten Ways Poems Can Change the World
- Poetry is made of experience stored in our body and converted into thought and feeling.
When we write poetry, we’re connecting our brains to the world as our body experiences—and experienced—it. Poetry lets us see the world we’re working with. That’s the first step toward meaningful change: knowing what is. - Poetry helps the poet articulate the unarticulated.
I’ve heard it said that poetry is a scream looking for a voice. Sometimes it’s a scream. Sometimes it’s a giggle. A yawn. Or weeping. But it’s always something altogether new. Poetry gives us constructs—words and rivers of language—for emotions and stations of truth we’ve not abstracted before; it shifts the camera ever so slightly until our subject is in focus in a new way. - Poetry inspires newness, which is the language of solutions.
When I first encountered Anne Sexton, I was only fourteen. I read her ekphrastic response to Starry Night and was simply overtaken by the narrative voice. I became that poem—and at fourteen I felt, deep inside my skin, something of what it felt like to be a woman trapped in a society that refused her power or agency. Something new emerged there from words on a page—and my lifelong commitment to feminism was born that day. - Poetry is our best attempt to capture the humanity of life with words.
In the 1997 film Contact, Jodie Foster, playing Dr. Eleanor Arroway, becomes the first human to transcend the space-time continuum. Gazing upon never-before-witnessed wonders, she whispers, “They should have sent a poet.” Her meaning was clear—scientists might understand how to do great things; engineers might manifest what scientists dream; poets, however, can tell us what those things mean. Yes, change requires action—but moving others to action requires meaning. - Poetry is a deep story.
Research in narrative cognition tells us that 90 to 95% of what we call thinking is actually storytelling. We are constantly in the process of flipping through scripts to find the right story to use. Lots of stories create temporary forms of logic or emotion (What does a good person look like? What makes a hero?). Poetry is a different kind of story. It doesn’t build a world in order to create logic in it—poetry uses the body of the reader to read—and feel—its way to the logic and truth. - Poetry is a universal mechanism for truth.
Every culture on Earth has poetry, and poetry is the mark of the sacred: we write our holy texts in it—in metre and beat and lyrics and verses—because they pulse within us. Poetry is a universal heartbeat of sorts, reminding us we’re alive—and so are others. With it, we can change that pulse in others. - Poetry rewrites shame.
I just finished Discarded: A Rural Anthology, and every poem in it was an undoing of shame. As with so many Black, brown, Indigenous, and queer artists before them, these rural poets recognized the capacity of poetry to reclaim what is lost. That reclamation is power—and change needs power. - Poetry is community.
Poet Jason O’Toole said to me, succinctly, “Poetry is community.” He was right. We write because we believe others will read, and the best and most profound support I’ve had in life has come from fellow poets. - Poetry presupposes meaning.
Poets write because they are meaningmakers. We sense connection, context, importance, parallels, truth. Any change the world needs will become our muse. - Poetry is a light.
Research shows that using logic in arguments often further entrenches those we disagree with. Poetry, however, isn’t logical. It starts with the body, which we can’t so easily deny, and shines truth for others.
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There’s a reason both literature and protests are measured in movements—because they are collective, because they inspire, because they recognize, at their core, the change that is needed, and then make it happen.
Do something—yes, lots of somethings—but let poetry be its foundation, so that the change is meaningful, unstoppable, and real.
Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr. is a student support specialist, educator, public speaker, and author, but mainly just a guy who wants to help make the world better. He happens to be a Kentucky Colonel and Kentucky Teacher of the Year too.
He is the author of the collection Gay Poems for Red States, a collection of narrative poetry about growing up queer in eastern Kentucky. He serves as a board member of the Kentucky Youth Law Project (which helps LGBTQ youth in Kentucky with legal needs) and is a re-occurring cohost and contributing board member of Progress Kentucky.
