Elizabeth Austen: Bridge Between Solitudes

We make our world by what we choose to see.

Poet Marie Howe defines poetry as “a cup of language to hold what can’t be said.” This is why poems are spoken at funerals and weddings, moments of heightened emotion, when we reach for language to carry us beyond the limits of ordinary speech to say the unsayable.

I believe poetry is also a bridge between solitudes. At its best, it transports us — through the nonlinear and irresistible persuasion of music and metaphor — into a state of receptive empathy, the closest thing we can get to truly understanding what it’s like to see the world as someone else does, to live inside another’s skin.

Poetry doesn’t substitute for relationships with actual people. But just as poem X might help me empathize with what it’s like to lose a spouse, poem Y might help me understand what a particular person of color (one writer) experiences that I, a particular white person (one reader), do not.

The late Lucille Clifton, Tim Seibles, Natasha Trethewey and Terrance Hayes are a few more poets, like Rankine, who have challenged and changed me, remaking my world by shifting what I see. You’ll find their poems online, at the library and in your local bookstore.

We make our world by what we choose to see.
Elizabeth Austen is Washington state’s poet laureate for 2014-16 and the author of “Every Dress a Decision.” The state’s poet laureate program is sponsored by Humanities Washington and ArtsWA.

- Seattle Times
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