Why Memorizing A Poem A Day Helped My Anxiety

For many of us, anxiety is part of our daily routines. Here's how I learned to manage it better. [This is for the Editorial Fellowship]

It reminded me of my love for stories.

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In high school, I covered my bedroom wall with notecards. Every day, I grabbed a fresh white notecard and scrawled film quotes, television dialogue, book passages, poems, that one-liner in that one story that jolted my soul awake. Stories always felt like bursts of lightning that zipped through my veins. I wanted to capture their words, cradle them in my palms, swallow them whole. At night, I faced the wall and read a few notecards, trying to keep them close. School remained a stressful fact of life, but literature, television, film—they were my life buoys.

And so, again feeling hopelessly overwhelmed, I turned to words.

I turned to poetry.

It gave me a sense of routine.

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During these past few months, the days have started to bleed together, contributing to my growing sense of unease and disorientation. But setting this one goal unexpectedly anchored me to some semblance of a schedule.

Every morning, I would slide out of bed, drink a cup of water, and grab Poem a Day: Vol 1: 366 Poems, Old and New, edited by Karen McCosker and Nicholas Albery. It was a thick collection of poems that had languished on my bookshelf for years, a school award gifted to me in high school by the English faculty. I sat on the floor of my bedroom, legs crossed, and read the words over and over again.

Many times, I was surprised by what ended up my being my favorite poem at the week’s end.

It showed me that other people have struggled and, most importantly, survived.

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These poets continue to forge connections across centuries and countries simply through the act of creation. It's unbelievably comforting.

For weeks, “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death,” written by William Butler Yeats, rolled around in my brain like marbles.

On afternoon walks, breathing in the sting of the early winter air, I would recite one of the lines, whispering it like a promise:

A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds

It felt soothing, like hot tea or a tin can of butter cookies. It was a poem about a man who did not seek out his passions for wild praise or revenge or wealth. He dreamed about the sky. He wanted to fly because it was up there, in the clouds, that he finally felt like himself.

It gave me courage.

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Nowadays, I try to read news in the morning, poetry at night. An unexpected equilibrium sprouts from this relationship. It is journalism that keeps me tethered to the world and to the people that live inside of it. It is poetry that reminds me, often, of the beauty inside that connection.

In Louise Glück’s “Matins,” she writes:

I walk the front lawn, pretending
to be weeding. You ought to know
I’m never weeding, on my knees, pulling
clumps of clover from the flower beds: in fact
I’m looking for courage.

Poetry is courageous writing. It requires diligence, persistence, and an urgent hope—a hope to disentangle, to unearth, and, most importantly of all, to understand.

Even on my darkest days, it gave me hope.

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I memorized one poem a day for two months. And I keep these sixty poems, these stories, close to my heart. When it gets too overwhelming, the world, the people, all of it, I whisper a poem by Susan Coolidge:

Every day is a fresh beginning,
Listen my soul to the glad refrain.
And, spite of old sorrows
And older sinning,
Troubles forecasted
And possible pain,
Take heart with the day and begin again.

You think you are alone for the longest time and then, suddenly, you realize you aren’t.