Imagining the Real: The Art of Poetry and the Art of Pastoral Attending

Abstract

This article explores the author's own engagement with poetry and with the multiple ways in which poetry may serve as a resource for the pastoral care giver. First, it considers poetry as a means of "tuning the ear" of the counselor to the client's use of metaphor and examines with the help of Mark Doty's moment-by-moment description of the creation of his poem "A Display of Mackerel" the parallel process of the unfolding of the meanings of metaphoric speech in closely attended-to pastoral conversation. Second, the relationships between focusing (Gendlin), and its associations with Christian meditation, and poetry are explored. Third, the article examines the psychological and spiritual significance of memorized poetry ("poems known by heart") by a close reading of a particular moment in a therapy session conducted by D.W. Winnicott and poems the author memorized at earlier stages in his life. Finally, it considers the power of finding a "soul friend" in particular poets