by Jo Wardhaugh Doyle                          Ireland             30.05.2026

What saved me from my storm and fire was poetry and art. Both modalities which bypass reason and control.
The two great female poets that I love are Mary Oliver and Emily Dickenson.

There insights on life are powerful.  Full of power, full of light hope and direction; Yet poets who write as they do I believe have done their journey, struggled with it, and pushed beyond.

It is impossible to write as they do without the searing wound and depth of insight and wisdom.

Mary Oliver shares her wisdom through her own journey of serene darkness. Looking at the amazement of the leaves and clouds in many ways saved Mary Oliver.

A quiet mystic who wanted to be left alone with her words of freedom. Her words liberated her and she passed the torched poems into my soul.

The Journey: I read it and read it and read it till it somehow started to liberate me from my own shackles to begin my own Journey.
Her poetry stops you.

You must stop and hear about the amazing Sun, or the snow geese where you will hold your breath to try and stop time.
Awe and amazement, simplicity counteracting convoluting lives.  Yes, poetry was better for me than any doctor at one point.

Poetry has a way of understanding you clearly and in that liberation of understanding you know you are not alone.
That was strength, which was grounding to keep moving forward knowing that someone at some point felt the same.
Surely that is the point.

Emily Dickonson who does not name her poems, had a poem which accompanied me for thirty years. Thirty years to begin to grasp its profundity.  Revelation after revelation at a depth of pain so much deeper than most understanding of a fixable ailment. It walks with you and you walk with it. A gift in time but these words along with the journey, carried me, strengthened me balanced me.

Emily Dickenson says.

There is a pain so utter.
It swallows substance up.
Then covers the Abyss with trance.
So memory can step
Around across upon it
As with a swoon
Goes safely where an open eye
Would drop him bone by bone.
That poem has been my journey.

The two poems befitting a complex life yet healthily accompanying growth and freedom, insight, and laughter.
Poetry if we let it sink into our souls are our seeds of life’s transformation.