Poems for the Time Capsule

This anthology began as a nucleus of poems I assembled to comfort and reassure patients about to undergo medical procedures. Using an experimental protocol I demonstrated that reading poems that celebrated the resiliency of the human spirit diminished anxiety and helped to establish a sense of trust. I put a sheaf of these poems in my outer office for patients to read while awaiting appointments. It was better than a fish tank.

Built into our basic instincts is the tendency to turn to poems in times of difficulty. Sales of poetry books sharply escalated after 9/11 and after the 2016 Presidential Election. Embedded in our genome is the sense that poetry brings a reliable source of wisdom, clarity and guidance. Frost suggests that we turn to poetry to show us "the way through." Given that there is always trouble somehow, somewhere, poetry is essential.

So these poems, along with a few others I'd collected in little stacks on my desk over thirty years of writing, teaching and publishing I put together into this anthology I called, Poems for the Time Capsule. Killer poems, they are also called. Poems that knock your socks off. Poems that reach deep into your consciousness and fix something there. I give copies to my patients facing hard times. I use this collection as a resource when I teach poetry at the Fromm Institute. I have found that poems of this high quality never fail to stir that sense of recognition that comes when something significant has passed before us.

Such an offering might be worthy material for a time capsule, a window backward from some distant future into a distilled essence of what our past has taught us about being human. For embedded there is not only a rendering of tensions into something beautiful but also clues to our very survival.

Poems for the Time Capsule Vol. 2

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