Poems Addressing Emotional Pain

“Wait” by Galway Kinnell and “After Great Pain, a Formal Feeling Comes” by Emily Dickinson are two poems that address the experience of great emotional pain.

In both, the person in pain is numb to the point of death. Both poems paint the external signs of that internal pain, that emotional crisis– the numbness, listlessness, inertness, and lack of interest in the world. The physical body shuts down to protect the aching heart and the chaotic mind.

In Kinnell’s poem, he encourages the person in pain to “wait,” to believe in the healing power of time itself. Be patient and life’s vitality will re-emerge, the narrator seems to say.

Dickinson’s poem seems less hopeful: the images of death and formality persist to the end, raising the question of whether we can ever outlive the pain of great emotional shock.

Poems by Mary Oliver and Naomi Nye

“Little Dog’s Rhapsody in the Night" by Mary Oliver 

I am lucky enough to have a dog and also lucky enough to know Mary Oliver’s collection Dog Songs. Those poems remind us that our dogs teach us philosophical lessons about how to live a good and full life and about what matters most in our lives. What matters most, they tell us continually, is love. They love us unconditionally and in so doing teach us the purity of loving. What could be a sweeter arrangement, indeed, than giving and receiving love? To do so enriches our lives and the lives of those we love. Oliver’s poem, “Little Dog’s Rhapsody in the Night,” ends with a reminder of the magic of that reciprocal giving and receiving. “… He puts his cheek against mine/and makes small, expressive sounds./…/“Tell me you love me,” he says./“Tell me again.”/Could there be a sweeter arrangement? Over and over/he gets to ask./I get to tell.”

"Kindness" by Naomi Nye

In Naomi Nye’s poem “Kindness,” sorrow and kindness figure as two sides of one coin – or perhaps more accurately, as a cause and effect relationship: “Before you know kindness as the deepest thing/you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.” Your own sorrow connects you to the pains and griefs of others and bulks up your empathic muscle. You come to know sorrow, the poem says, by losing the things you once counted on, by “feeling the future dissolve in your hand.” Once you know that desolation, you are in a better position to understand the “tender gravity of kindness” and how much it matters. Henry James, when asked about the important things in life, responded, “Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; the third is to be kind.” We would be wise to follow his counsel.