AT URSULINE
Poetry Club meeting pre-COVID
Poetry Indeed: Close Up on Ursuline’s Poetry Club and Poetry Out Loud Event By Adrianna Robertson English Department Faculty & Poetry Club Co-Moderator
“If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” –Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson’s famous quote has stood the test of time because she captures the response to reading a good poem with such accuracy. A good poem excites the mind in such a way that the body responds. In this way a poem has the power to make us feel as other genres simply do not. This connection to feeling--both mental and physical--is what Dickinson was expressing in her famous quote. Dickinson needed poetry because she realized that it was a necessary part of living in and experiencing the world. And, though Dickinson could
never have imagined a year like 2020, she might have pointed us in the direction of poetry as a way to learn, imagine, understand--and ultimately find healing. Our Fourth Annual Poetry Out Loud event, sponsored by Ursuline’s Poetry Club, took place on June 2, 2020 in the midst of a pandemic and a pivotal racial reckoning. Though always well-attended and essential to community-building, this POL was unlike any other. Some part of this most certainly had to do with the fact that it was attended via Zoom for the
first time; however, it went beyond this. There was a reverence for the poems that matched the recent world happenings. There also seemed to be a longing for them to provide answers, solutions--a salve for all of our grief. The poems did not disappoint--from original student-written poems to treasured favorites by the likes of Robert Frost, Charles Simic, and Danez Smith. The need Dickinson had for poetry, to express her feelings and connect with the world somehow, is the same need that prompts the members of the 36
