On Dec. 14, like many other students, I boarded the first flight home after experiencing something I could not process, and perhaps still cannot. The atrociousness and spontaneity of the shooting overwhelmed me, and as I sat on the plane, I was in a transient state of confusion.
I thought back to other times I had felt lost, and for the first time in months, I turned to poetry. I began writing lines slowly, letting each word and stanza create space to process what I could not articulate internally. In that moment, poetry wasn’t an escape, but rather a way of staying present when everything else felt too unbearable.
Neuroimaging studies show that interacting with poetry activates higher-order brain regions involved in sustained focus, attention, and reflective thinking. Poetry’s literary elements, such as rhythm and closure points, require readers or listeners to integrate semantic and emotional information, exercising cognitive skills in a developmental manner. These neural advantages indicate that poetry is a structured way to build emotional resilience and work toward mental clarity, proving helpful in times of overwhelming stress.
At Brown, these benefits are accessible to all. As the open curriculum encourages students to engage with material outside of their concentrations, taking a poetry class – or a literature class that engages with poetry – is an accessible option. In fact, poetry’s broad range of themes itself embodies the liberating, multidisciplinary spirit of the open curriculum. A physics or computer science major might relish in Fibonacci-inspired poems or decoding the difference between patterns of the Shakespearean versus Petrarchan sonnets, while an art history major could find themselves luxuriating in the creativity of ekphrastic poetry.
Beyond its breadth, poetry offers something that contemporary life rarely allows: a chance to slow down. Poetry’s value lies not just in what it contains, but in how it asks us to engage. In a society that rewards immediacy and constant output, poetry emboldens us to attend to nuance. This deliberate engagement has been observed to strengthen our cognitive capacity for sustained attention, demonstrating that structured poetry exercises measurably reduced fear, sadness, anger, and worry in hospitalized pediatric patients while fostering creative engagement and self-reflection. By requiring readers to process layered meaning beyond skimming superficial content, poetry cultivates a tolerance for enduring demanding thoughts and embracing ambiguity, honing interpretive reasoning and emotional resilience.
Furthermore, poetry teaches the mind to tolerate uncertainty and complexity in a way few other forms of literature accomplish. Unlike prose or informational text, poems often resist straightforward conclusions, leaving their meanings open-ended and, in doing so, allowing for deeper reflection. By asking readers to inhabit uncertainty rather than resolve it quickly, poetry strengthens the ability to think critically in the face of ambiguity and to tolerate complexity in both language and experience. It trains the mind to remain engaged even when immediate clarity is impossible. While other forms of literature may teach us stories and motifs, poetry becomes a rehearsal for living thoughtfully, teaching us that not all questions have answers and that reflection itself is a form of understanding.
So set down your textbook, close your laptop, and let a poem meet you where you are. Type in ‘poetry’ during course registration next semester and see where it takes you. Returning to reading and writing poetry after the shooting helped me continuously process my emotions, and it consistently reminds me of its external benefits and values that extend far beyond personal solace. Brown allows each student to find their own entry point, whether through a class, talk, or even a single poem. Give poetry the same attention it asks of you, and you will discover the cognitive and emotional benefits that last far beyond the page.