Did you know the majority of your waking day is spent reacting to your mind’s unconscious perceptions? Psychologist Sigmund Freud credited poets with finding the door to the unconscious mind and poetry as a key. Freud was astonished by poetry’s ability to seep into the cracks of mental awareness and commented, “Everywhere I go I find that the poet has been there before me.” Incorporating poetry into your daily routine is like giving your mind a clearly charted map of the present moment and the tools for transforming negative obstacles into a positive reality.

Modern-era poetry has often functioned under an erroneous aura of exclusivity. An excerpt from an 1896 edition of the New York Times stated that poetry had fallen into disfavor amongst “cockneys and costermongers,” but was relished in academic circles where the frivolous ambition of moneymaking was absent. But poetry class-wars, however hyped and hoodwinking, must take a back seat to history. Poetry was the language of the underprivileged, the impoverished and overlooked masses of society long before literacy and its life as sidekick to cocktail hour.

One case in point is Phillis Wheatley, an African American slave, who after learning to read and write at age 8 became a timelessly celebrated poet in later years. Wheatley’s poem “On Being Brought From Africa to America” challenges the commonly held perceptions of both blacks and whites in 18th century America. Ordinary speech is also full of poetry. If you’ve ever seen a woman with “eyes as deep as the ocean” or had a child whose bedroom “looked like a cyclone hit it” you’ve caught the poetry drift.

All poets seem to have a proverbial cookie jar that they draw ideas from, or as author Julia Cameron calls it a “spiritual mailbox,” that holds the sensory details we collect throughout our days. Crafting a poem is as easy as reaching into the jar and pulling details out. As the tidbits gather on the page, the unconscious area of the brain takes over and organizes them into something meaningful. Ironically, the end result is emotion and the poet searches for words that can describe this emotion without confining it to a singular word like “love, hate, fear or excitement.”

Delving into poetry requires no membership card, lofty perceptions or academic degree. Poetry is about giving voice to experience. U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky uses grunts, muttering and noodling to find his poetic groove. Terrance Hayes waits for the poetry “stork.” And award-winning poet Sharon Olds has been known to draw inspiration from “a breast self-exam; the tooth fairy; Calvinist parents who beat up their children; a gesture of love; seeing oneself naked over age 50 in a set of bright hotel bathroom mirrors.”

Find your cookie jar. In poetry there are no rules.

Do you write poetry?

-Li St. Micheal