How Poetry Can Shift Your Perspective

When you pay close attention to a poem, it invites you to radically rethink the way you see something. The craft tools poets have at their disposal help make this perspective-shifting possible. But how do poets accomplish this? In your own work, what can you do to transmit to the reader your own unique perspective?

Let’s do a close study of a favorite poem of mine. 

Close Study: “I Was Told the Sunlight Was a Cure” by Hanif Abdurraqib

Retrieved from Poets.org.

I Was Told the Sunlight Was a Cure

for the cloak of despair thrown over our bright & precious
corners but tell that to the lone bird who did not get the memo
dizzy & shouting into the newly unfamiliar absence of morning
light from atop a sagging branch outside my window—a branch

which, too, was closer to the sky before falling into the chorus
line of winter’s relentless percussion all of us, victims to this flimsy math
of hours I was told there was a cure for this. I was told the darkness
would surrender its weapons & retreat I know of no devils who evict themselves

to the point of permanence. and still, on the days I want
to be alive the sunlight leaves me stunned like a kiss
from someone who has already twirled away by the time my eyes open
on the days I want to be alive I tell myself I deserve a marching band

or at least a string section to announce my arrival above
ground for another cluster of hours. if not a string section, at least one
drummer & a loud-voiced singer well versed in what might move me
to dance. what might push my hand through a crowded sidewalk

towards a woman who looks like a woman from my dreams
which means nothing if you dream as I do, everyone a hazy quilt
of features only familiar enough to lead me through a cavern of longing
upon my waking & so I declare on the days I want to be alive I might drag

my drummer & my singer to your doorstep & ask you to dance
yes, you, who also survived the groaning machinery of darkness
you who, despite this, do not want to be perceived in an empire
awash with light in the sinning hours & we will dance

until our joyful heaving flows into breathless crying, the two often pouring
out of the chest’s orchestra at the same tempo, siblings in their arrival & listen,
there will be no horns to in the marching band of my survival.

the preacher says there will be horns at the gates of the apocalypse & I believed even myself
the angel of death as a boy, when I held my lips to a metal mouthpiece & blew out a tune
about autumn & I am pressing your ear to my window & asking if you can hear the deep
moans of the anguished bird & how the wind bends them into what sounds like a child
clumsily pushing air into a trumpet for the first time & there’s the joke:

only a fool believes that the sound at the end of the world would be sweet.

This poem chews me up and spits me on the (sunlit) sidewalk. It asks my organs to assume different positions. It makes me feel hot in the winter, cold in the summer, and attunes me to the tiny electric vibrations happening beneath my skin. This poem is so so good.

A great poem constantly shifts the reader’s perspective. In this poem, let’s look at a few craft decisions that make this possible:

• The poem’s evolving images (accomplished alongside its line breaks).
• The poem’s syntax.
• The poem’s search for the miraculous in the mundane.
• The poem’s ending somewhere radically different than where it began.

It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: the images in this poem are phenomenal. Here are the ones that give me chills:

• the lone bird who did not get the memo / dizzy & shouting into the newly unfamiliar absence of morning / light from atop a sagging branch outside my window
• on the days I want / to be alive the sunlight leaves me stunned like a kiss / from someone who has already twirled away by the time my eyes open
• one / drummer & a loud-voiced singer well versed in what might move me / to dance.
• towards a woman who looks like a woman from my dreams / which means nothing if you dream as I do, everyone a hazy quilt / of features only familiar enough to lead me through a cavern of longing

These images are all specific, surprising, and they manage to tie the abstract to the concrete. They also feel aesthetically related: the poem relies frequently on images of nature and joy, despite (or perhaps because of) the poem’s sense of urgency, the desire to find happiness in spite of the looming nature of despair.

These images also rely on a syntax I can only describe as careening. The poem’s sentences contain a strange, dangerous musicality, running head-first into the next line or clause. The poem’s frequent enjambments often allow for lines to carry double meanings. Take this movement:

dizzy & shouting into the newly unfamiliar absence of morning
light from atop a sagging branch outside my window—a branch

which, too, was closer to the sky before falling into the chorus
line of winter’s relentless percussion all of us, victims to this flimsy math
of hours I was told there was a cure for this.

There are some interesting enjambments here: morning / light, chorus / line, math / of hours. These line breaks allow those images to become multifaceted. For example, the “absence of morning” stands on its own and is further developed by the light, the branch, the sky. They also add to the poem’s speed and rhythm. Lastly, the poem intentionally avoids the use of punctuation, adding to that sense of speed. For example, I would have expected a period, semicolon, or em-dash after “of hours” in the above excerpt, but the poem rushes into a different thought. Pay attention to how this affects your reading of the poem and its swirling images.

These craft decisions occur throughout the poem, coinciding with the poem’s search for the miraculous in the mundane. the poem pays careful attention to lone birds, snow-heavy branches, and sunlight, before trying to celebrate our resilience through the darkness. And then those final stanzas, where the music we dance to gets reinterpreted, and now it’s the music heralding the end of time, and there we are, foolish enough to believe that sound might be beautiful.

What should we make of this poem’s many ironies? Are these just the words of anguish from a poet with seasonal depression? Perhaps—but Abdurraqib’s poem grapples with something real and painful: how do we celebrate our survival when we’re surrounded by demise? Do we confuse sorrow with joy? It is complicated to be happy, and while the speaker of this poem contextualizes their unhappiness (the groaning machinery of darkness; being perceived in an empire awash with light), the poem also asks us to consider our own happiness, or lack thereof, and the difficulty of feeling what, once, seemed to be such simple emotions (happy vs sad).

A great poem “takes a leap” somewhere, shifting our perspectives and realities. We begin this poem in sunlight, and end at the end of time. How is this possible? Pay careful attention to the evolution of images: we go from nature to music to religious imagery, all the while considering our desires to live, our desires not to. I have read this poem again and again and again, always observing something new, always noticing something I didn’t before.

Craft Perspective: “The Art of Allowing Change” by Maria Popova

Read it here, at The Marginalian.

This delightful essay tells the story of Susan R. Barry, a neurobiologist who was born without stereo vision. In other words, her eyes were misaligned, and her brain processed the world as 2-dimensional. She lived her life this way until a new kind of therapy allowed her to view the world in three dimensions—which, when you’re used to only two of them, can be quite overwhelming.

Popova quotes some beautiful passages of Barry’s writing, such as an instance in which she went out for lunch, but was so caught up by the beauty of a snowstorm that she forgot lunch entirely. She looked at the world with a child’s wonder years after her vision was corrected, after she became aware of the magic and beauty in being a part of the world, the way our 3-dimensional vision allows us to be.

This is one of the things that great poetry can do, and that great poets should do: see and transmit the world in new and wondrous ways.

But, we can’t just transmit, we must guide our reader through our perspectives. Popova shares the story of a different woman, who was born without hearing but received cochlear implants when she was 12. At first, sound itself was incredibly unnerving—as I’m sure it would be for any of us, born into and only familiar with silence, the hardwiring in our brains that interpret sound entirely unused until now. Luckily, this woman had doctors and therapists to guide her through this completely new reality: first the understanding of sound, then the processing of it, then the interpreting, until finally this new mode of perception was integrated into her life.

When great poetry introduces us to new ways of viewing the world, that’s what the poem is doing. It’s nothing short of a magic trick. It’s why I love Hanif’s poem so much: its sudden transformations guiding me to a completely unexpected, radically new way of thinking about joy and despair and the end of the world. It’s also why I love any of the other poems I’ve shared with you in this newsletter: when a poem moves me, it moves my perception of things, creating new worlds for me to live in.

Sometimes a great poem even contacts the miraculous, which Popova has also written about here: https://www.themarginalian.org/2024/02/03/loren-eiseley-birds/.

What does this mean for your own poetry? There are no hard-and-fast rules for changing your readers’ perspectives, but here are some tips:

• Show the world as you really see it. Chances are, your perspective is unlike anyone else’s.
• Use unadorned imagery. This is a similar tip to the one above. Don’t try to make your images prettier than they are; the images alone are enough.
• Use metaphor with intention. Metaphors and similes are great ways of shifting perspective, but use them with intention. Not everything should be a metaphor or even a symbol, otherwise we lose track of reality altogether. Hanif employs simile sparingly in his poem, but to great effect: “on the days I want / to be alive the sunlight leaves me stunned like a kiss”
• Take a leap. Let your poem end somewhere radically different than where it began. Allow your work to undergo transformation.
• Get to the heart of things. Don’t shy away from the hard and terrible truth: within it is also beauty, meaning, and life itself.