The Importance of Poetry and Myth in Daily LIfe

Collective Consciousness in Poems Relating to Myth

Jul 8, 2008

Poetry and myth both relate us back to collective soul. Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell were journeyers into poet's realm of collective unconscious relating to myth.

Are poetry and myth essential to life? If poems and myths were never read or heard, would they be missed? "No, " one might answer. But why, when both seem essentially dismissed from public discourse, do they never quite disappear?

Something speaks to the human spirit. Some aspect of daily life which does not survive solely on a diet of talk shows, cable news, or even the internet, comes alive in this realm. Whether love poetry, nature poetry, narrative poetry, romantic poetry, reading or writing the myriad kinds of poetry seem essential to life.

Without Poetry the Soul is Dry

The poet William Carlos Williams wrote, “It is difficult to get news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for the lack of what is found there.” This is what is commonly referred to as soul. Someone is spoken of as being soul-less or without soul when their actions and words feel disconnected from who they are. These are the “hollow men” of T. S. Eliot’s poem, dry stalks of humankind drifting across the earth.

Just as it is obvious when a person lacks soul, it is obvious when it is awake and thriving. Many world leaders, for example, often seem lacking in soulfulness while others, from their exuberance and optimism, seem to have it in abundance. Perhaps the difference resides in the amount of poetry they allow into their lives.

Jung and the Collective Unconscious

Poems may offer a way to keep myth alive, but it has long been debated where myth comes from. Some mythologists assert that they were invented by a non-scientific community to make sense of a nonsensical universe. Others postulate that they are the archetypal stories of a common dreamscape. What is striking is how often these stories retain their relevance.

Carl Jung, great psychologist, thinker, and early partner of Freud, hypothesized that myth as well as dreams arose from what he called the collective unconscious (not to be mistaken with collective soul). The origin of myths may never be known, but it seems obvious they serve some larger purpose. Perhaps this is due to the archetypal energies, those defining patterns of emotion and symbol, still resonate within.

Archetypes and Psychic Visions

The modern world was re-introduced to myth in the late eighties by Joseph Campbell with such popular books as The Hero with a Thousand Faces and by his famous PBS interview series with Bill Moyers The Power of Myth. It has become almost cliché to draw on the hero’s journey to make sense of the stages of life. However, many poets and writers working from archetypal energies, still frame these stages in terms of myth as well as fairy tale.

Along with demarcating various life stages, poets have become the shamans who tap into myths for their own psychic visions. Imagery, symbol and language may be the material out of which poems are built, but it is from the mythic realm of psyche that poetry draws. This is what binds the human family together.

Perhaps here is part of the secret as to why myth and poetry endure. If all dreamers are being fed by the same streams of the collective unconscious, we are truly one family. Poetry and myth support and sustain the inner fabric of human life. Without these the spirit flags.

Campbell, J. (1972). The hero with a thousand faces. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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