A Spiritual Question

Research Poetry

To better understand the participants’ narrative, Clandinin and Connelly (2000) suggested researchers employ creative research texts such as poetry. Gladding (2005) asserted that counseling is “by its nature a creative endeavor” (p. 2); further creative art, such as poetry, can assist counselors to learn about and appreciate the lived experience of people and illuminate ideas that may be “paradoxical or dialectic” (Furman, 2006, p. 561). To think dialectically requires a perception of context and the use of “metaphor and reframing to transfer knowledge from one context to another” (Hanna, Bemak, & Chung, 1999, p. 129). Gladding (2005) stated that counselors who employ an artistic medium such as poetry also exercise a creative process of analysis and evaluation; thus, critical and convergent thinking occurs. Creative evaluation is a recursive refinement of thoughts and beliefs. Therefore, art and poetry may offer new paradoxical or dialectic perspectives of viewing and experiencing the world (Furman, 2006; Gladding, 2005).

In recent decades, creative arts such as music, dance, and poetry have increased in importance as tools in qualitative research (Furman, 2006). This trend is based on a long history of poetry that is a powerful means to express emotion and narrate interactional discovery (Furman, 2006), and also answers the call by Denzin and Lincoln (2000) for a diversification of methodology and research paradigms. By using research poetry as a means to elucidate the themes and codes extracted from the narratives, I have joined other researchers who use creative methods to report narrative research and underscore context and refine and compress ideas that emerge from the data.

Another motivation to analyze narrative data with research poetry is that the nature of speech, conversations, and storytelling is more poetic than prosaic (Richardson, 2000). Research poetry “invites people in” and poetic stanzas “open spaces for thinking” that might “elude us” otherwise (Richardson, 2000, p. 930); this invitation to reflection can be transformative. Thus, the representations of qualitative data through creative and analytic practices are compelling because they re-create experiences, evoke emotion, and require analysis.

According to Lahman et al. (2011), researchers should consider three methodological points when reporting research poetry. These points are (a) accessibility, (b) compressed form, and (c) the ability to write poetry. Regarding accessibility, Lahman et al. (2011) noted that some researchers believe that research poetry is inaccessible and alienating. Yet, Furman (2006) argued that the compressed nature of research poetry may enhance accessibility for some readers. One way to increase accessibility of research poetry is to involve the participant in the process of writing research poetry because the aim of poetic research is “to keep qualitative researchers’ pondering” (Lahman et al., 2011, p. 894). To increase the accessibility and credibility of the research, multiple member checks were employed; participants provided feedback, corrections, and reflection about the transcripts of each interview, the emerging themes, and versions of the research poetry.

“Words matter” (Denzin, 2000, p. 898). This compressed sentence describes the importance of verbiage within research poetry. Succinct and compressed language can make the poem more accessible for a reader and requires the researcher to evaluate the essential (Furman, 2006). This evaluation is a “mulling over each word, space, and punctuation” (Lahman et al., 2011, p. 894). What the reader imagines through reading research poetry causes the poem to become relevant and metaphorically generalizable for the reader (Furman, 2006). Sometimes what is excluded in a research poem can be mysterious and may be as important as what is included (Lahman et al., 2011). Various poetic forms may help researchers achieve the compression that is necessary for a successful poem. Stories are told through poetry and the “whittling away of words,” as the researcher constructs a research poem, compression can get “to the heart of the matter” and this compressed form can send powerful message that “may equally intrigue and incite” Lahman et al., 2011, p. 894).

The third methodological consideration for research poets is that of training research poets (Lahman et al., 2011). There is disagreement as to the training research poets should have. Some intellectuals require students to have a certain amount of arts training before undertaking research poetry; others believe that anyone can write good poetry (Lahman et al., 2010). While in some cultures, such as Thailand and Saudi Arabia, poetry is highly structured and poets are specially trained, other poets such as the American poet Emily Dickinson had no formal training. Dickinson is a famous poet who wrote most of her poetry for herself and was untrained (Lahman et al., 2010).

Another consideration for research poets is the use of formed versus unformed poetry. Furman (2006) noted that most research poets use a freestyle form of poetry that is quasipoetic. Free verse poetry, which is written without the restraints of meter, strict rhyming patterns, and the use of a measured line, is also known as fluid or organic poetry (Oliver, 1994). Free verse, although nonmetrical in design, contains language that is composed, deliberate, fitting, and effective. Free verse should set up an expectation, a premise, and make a response to the premise that attains “a felt [sic] integrity” (Oliver, 1994, p. 68). The poet Mary Oliver (1994) explained that when she teaches students the craft of poetry, she begins with free form poetry, because it is more accessible to modern readers and research poets. By its accessibility, research poets will be encouraged to “plunge in rather than hang back” (p. 17), and thus gaining confidence and sophistication, they will attempt the more difficult patterns of formed (metrical) verse. Research poetry whether formed or unformed, encompasses “an essential difference from ordinary language” the vital difference is “of intent and intensity,” therefore the research poet “must not get lost, in either structure or statement, but must be able to manage both” (Oliver, 1994, p. 16).

In contrast, metrical verse is bound by the syllabic length and rhythm of the verse. The rhythmic turning of the line is felt by the reader. While the intricacies of metrical verse is beyond the scope of this article, the reader is encouraged to consult Oliver’s (1994) handbook of poetry for a better understanding of metrical poetry. Furman (2006) noted that much of the literature of research poetry has been composed in free verse, due to the preponderance of this freestyle poetry; he challenged research poets to explore the “power of formal poetic structures” (p. 560). Furman created two research poems using the formal poetic structures of the French-Malaysian pantoum and the Japanese-inspired tanka. In response to Furman’s challenge, Lahman et al. (2011) presented research poetry in the forms of the traditional elegy and Japanese senryu. The essential for research poets, whether writing metrical or free verse poetry, is to enrich the personalized reflection, make communicable the experiences of the research subject, to express a general truth and the particularity of an experience, and make the experience a general symbol (Willis, 2002). This controversy of trained and untrained poets led Lahman and her colleagues (Lahman et al., 2010; Lahman et al., 2011) to propose “good enough research poetry”; to write “good enough research poetry,” Lahman and colleagues (2010) suggested that the learning process for writing research poetry begins early in life and “one must read, read, read poetry in order to then write, write, write poetry” (p. 47). Like most learning, it is in the practice of writing compressed poetry that one becomes knowledgeable and skilled, and like qualitative research, it is the reflexive and recursive elements that allow for data reduction (Furman, 2006). Good enough poetry is a means to increase methodological diversity in research (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000). Good enough research poetry also answers the challenge that Clandinin and Connelly (2000) issued to infuse narrative research texts with creative means of expression. Good enough poetry has been drawn from the narrative transcripts of this study to illuminate, elucidate, and compress the lived experiences of the participant.

While research poetry may be evocative in nature, research poems are also accepted as objective research because they are composed from the utterances of the recorded interview, and therefore, are traceable to the participant (Lahman et al., 2010). The process of writing research poems varies from researcher to researcher (Butler-Kisber, 2010; Glesne, 1997). Research poems are written after the data are collected and use the participants’ expressions and utterances (Glesne, 1997; Lahman et al., 2010). Extracting words and phrases from transcripts and creating research poetry can be described as found poetry (Butler-Kisber, 2010).

Glesne (1997), Furman (2006), and Butler-Kisber (2010) made recommendations for researchers to write research poetry. I incorporated the recommendation of these authors to formulate research poetry that is a representation of the themes and codes that emerged from the narrative data. From the coded themes of the research data, research poems were created. First, I used only the words of the participant. Second, language for the poetry was extracted from multiple parts of the interview transcription. And third, the words used in the poetry represented the participants’ manner of speech and speech rhythms (Glesne, 1997). In addition, to facilitate the language of the poem, words or phrases were sometimes repeated, sometimes word endings were added or dropped (e.g., ing, s, ly), and in some cases, verb tenses were changed (e.g., would be to am). These changes in tense were indicated by the use of brackets (e.g., help, help[ing], them, [students]). Ellipses have been used to indicate omissions from the complete phrases or sentences extracted from the field text.

In addition to Glesne’s (1997) outline for writing research poetry, I also incorporated the suggestions of Butler-Kisber (2010) to write research poetry which included the following:

These suggestions were incorporated to highlight the language of the participant into lines and stanzas that are emotional, visual, universal, and relational (Furman, 2006). Using the language of the participant provided an “exploration of the lived experience” and enhanced the findings of the narrative interview (Furman, 2006, p. 562). Because poetry made new configurations of words, it allowed the researcher, participant, and reader to see, hear, and feel the world in a new dimension (Richardson, 2000).

While studying research poetry, I was advised that to write good research poetry I needed to read poetry on a daily basis. As part of my initial foray into research poetry, I found poets.org and received their daily email that included a poem of the day. These poems from poets.org are often dense, thick, and nuanced, and thus demanded attention which stretched my thinking in creative and complex ways. I also signed up to receive Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. Each day a noticeably different type of poem than the one from poets.org would arrive in my email. Often, these poems from the Writer’s Almanac were more narrative in nature, with allusions and subjects that were more familiar to me. The exercise of reading at least two poems a day has been a wonderful exercise to increase awareness of poetry in many forms. Sometimes I have been inspired to click on more links to read more poetry, other times it has led me to find and re-read poems in my personal library.

One of these poetic tomes that I revisited was Les Fleurs du Mal, by Charles Baudelaire, a review of my undergraduate French degree. To read poetry in a foreign language requires flexible and intricate thought to understand distinctive expression through nuanced verbs, subjunctive tenses, written and spoken tenses, adjective placement, and other linguistic differences. My experience reading literature and poetry in a foreign language inspires complex thought and reflection, and requires a different knowing (James, 1890). Further exploration of my own bookshelves led to a realization that I have a modest sized collection of poetry with collections of authors such as La Fontaine, Whitman, Rilke, Rumi, Neruda, and Dickinson. One day while singing a hymn at church, I realized that I have hymnals in from several denominations, and that literally, I had hundreds of poems of religious and spiritual texts. This wide variety of poetry was instrumental for me to better understand the idiom and rhythm of poetry.

When I was first introduced to the notion of research poetry, I was particularly inspired by “Mother Liar” by Maria Lahman (2009). I remember glancing at the article and seeing the whiteness of the page and feeling a sense of excitement to read something that didn’t have to do with the complexities of statistics. When I sat down to read the poem, I was blown away by the manner that it spoke to me. It rang true for me, and helped me understand the unique situations that women face; it helped me understand myself. I was intrigued by the symbolism of women within the text; I was also dumbfounded by the last line that quipped “I should have known better” (Lahman, 2009, p. 1454). Who hasn’t looked back and seen their life more clearly?

Poetry, such as Lahman’s (2009) Mother Liar, demands self-reflection; self-awareness about self and marginalized others is an integral element of the counseling profession (Ratts et al., 2015). Self-reflection and awareness are linked to social justice, and thus poetry, with its demand for recursive analysis, is also an avenue for counselors and counselor educators to address social justice concerns. Counselors, who are called to work toward social justice, are visionary as they work toward a just society (Brueggeman, 2001; Ratts et al., 2015). Brueggeman (2001) described prophets from every age as poetic. The poetic voices of prophets past and present evoke an awareness of the dominant culture and provide a call for justice and equity, “poetic imagination is the last way left in which to challenge . . . the dominant reality” (p. 40). In a similar vein, Foster (2012) noted that research poetry and other art forms as a research method value experience, imagination, and intuition. Research poetry “helps us to challenge conventional wisdom and to understand the nuances of life in a sociologically engaged, rigorous and enriching way” (p. 753). Thus the creative use of research poetry provided multiple avenues for me as a researcher to explore religion and spirituality, justice, and judgment as it related to the narratives of nine counselor educators.

Thematic Poetry Described

The first poem Conviction emerged from the theme I called Journeys which was extracted from the multiple stories that participants shared about their religious and spiritual paths. This collective voice poem includes the voice of each of the nine participants and explores the multiple paths of spiritual and religious meaning of the participants. Conviction illustrates faith, assurance, circumstances, thought processes, and experiences of the participants’ spiritual migrations.

The theme of Spiritual Practices was endorsed by seven of the nine participants. Two poems emerged from the participants narratives. The first is an untitled poem (more present) extracted from one participant’s narrative. Characteristic of the participant, this succinct poem captures the heart of productivity and perspective. In contrast, the second poem, which is also untitled (I am), is more expansive and speaks to how spiritual focus and perspective can affect counselor educators as they teach and supervise. The words of this collective poem represent the religious and spiritual beliefs of the seven participants who endorsed this theme.

The theme of Value of the Relationship was endorsed by all nine participants. The research poem entitled Touchstone captures the spirit of the value found in relationships. Although this poem is compressed, the words spoken by two of the participants seem to underscore the immeasurable significance of relationships. In contrast to relationships, the next theme marked the pain of judgment.

I created three poems reflective of the theme Marginalization. All nine of the participants had been discounted in some way. A powerful poem entitled Acceptance? is extracted from the concerns voiced by six of the participants, and accentuates the intolerance and fear of many counselor educators as it relates to addressing religion and spirituality with students, clients, and colleagues. Another poem (The fact is, racism is alive and well) characterizes the emotional burden of marginalization; this research poem is untitled and from the narratives of six of the participants, reveals facets of the systemic marginalization of society and within the counseling profession. One participant, a Korean counselor educator, expressed multiple intersections of marginalization. These juxtapositions, in compressed form, are embodied in the poem entitled Diversity Dialogue.

The theme Risk and Taboo is explored in the acrostic poem. This untitled research poem is a visual representation of the intersections of accountability, authenticity, and the vulnerability required for counselor educators to teach and supervise through example. While the word included in this poem are powerful, another aspect of the power of example, are the words unspoken and unnamed. This acrostic poem reflects the words of five of the participants. The final research poem, entitled Professional Hesitancy, distills the comments of six of the nine participants of the risk and taboos counselor educators face when teaching and supervising students. This poem underscores the thoughts and feelings associated with professional hesitancy surrounding religion and spirituality.