Editor’s Note: Tess Taylor is the author of five collections of poetry, including “Work & Days” and “Rift Zone.” She is releasing the anthology “Leaning Toward Light: Poems for Gardens & the Hands That Tend Them” in August. The views expressed here are her own. Read more opinion on CNN.
Sometimes, when I tell people that I write pieces on poetry for CNN, they wonder what that might be about. Other people are sort of surprised to hear a news site covers poetry, even in a sidelong way. After all, isn’t all the news about politics, who is fighting with whom?
In a wild, often heartbreaking year like this one, when the world seems in such tremendous pain, it’s easy to wonder if poems matter. Yet those of us that love poems know that they offer us a deeply important way to communicate with others and ourselves, and to mark our lives in time.
This year we came up with a number of answers to why poems matter now: because they help us open the back door of our brains. Because they help us imagine and build diverse worlds. Because they offer what Andrew Marvell called “green shade.” Because they keep us company in the darkest places. And remind us of our humanity there.
Poetry’s music and beauty and strangeness is here to excavate us to ourselves and remind us that, in a tide of very, very challenging news, we are human, and we must dare to feel and savor our lives. I often say that in my columns, and I know that sometimes I’m preaching to the choir. But I also know that the choir of poetry-lovers is vast.
One reason, dear CNN readers, that we know poetry matters, is because we hear, often, that poems matter to you. One of the most commented-on columns this year was last year’s new year’s column that invited you into a daily haiku writing challenge, offering the idea that taking a moment to jot a few lines of verse each day might prove to be a healing practice.
I have to say: the response I received was overwhelming. Many of you wrote to me during the year that writing a few lines observing each day helped ground you, and how meaningful it felt to take time to notice a feeling, emotion, season or light. That’s why this year, CNN Opinion decided to take the next step – asking you to share your own haiku. If you’ve been using this daily practice, I encourage you to submit, using this form, a few haiku along with anything you’d like to share about what it was like trying to write each day — if it was useful, how it might have shaped your year. If you’re just starting out with it, please share where it’s taking you.