TUCSON SOMATIC PSYCHOTHERAPY BLOG

Borderlands, as areas of overlap and complexity, invite wakefulness.

I’ve been a poet and a lover of poetry for the last thirty years. Many of the poets I love most bridge every day life with a dimension of reality that requires time, space, and a particular quality of attention in order to experience. I think of them as “wisdom poets.” Their way of seeing gets beyond the surface of things to reveal fuller, deeper truths that interpenetrate the mundane. These poets offer inspiration, nourishment, and insight even if —and, perhaps, especially if — they create disruption. The tensions they highlight and hold are borderlands that give us access not only to new ways of thinking and feeling, but new ways of experiencing ourselves and our world.

While I appreciate a diversity of poems and poetic styles, I’m particularly drawn to poems through which I can imagine the poet’s state of being at the time of writing as refined, expanded, and deeply connected to experience. (Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche called such art “Dharma Art.”)  I love poems that feel to me like the act of writing them was, itself, the moment of insight dawning. Such works offer essential perspectives to living lives of meaning: they are expressions of embodied insight. I’ve experienced it myself. As “I” write the poem, the poem teaches me, shows me something particular and important — about the world, myself, or even the nature of reality. 

Borderlands came about, in part, because of my own need for poetry — my need to read poems, commit them to heart, give voice to them, write them, and enjoy them with others. I am a psychotherapist; and, I was a singer, dancer, and poet, first. While poetry has no doubt contributed to my mental well-being over the years, it is truer to say it is germane to the health of my spirit and, sometimes, to the development of Insight. 

This blog also arose from the numerous times I’ve been in session and a poem has come to my mind that seemed to mirror and illuminate what a client was grappling with. I wanted a ready holding container and community space for those poems. I hope they nourish you; bring meaning and wakefulness to your life; feed your soul. This collection is meant to be accessible to all kinds of readers — not just those who have studied poetry. I believe the world needs the healing power of poems and poets now more than ever.  

I acknowledge that I am creating my life and home on the lands of the Tohono O’odham and Pascua Yaqui people. May my presence here be as helpful and harmonious as possible for the original people and other beings of this land, and for all beings.