The power of poetry to shape our lives is profound. English and print journalism majors are highly susceptible to the spellbinding properties of poetry, but biology, agronomy, business, chemistry and math majors aren’t immune to its side effects either.

Poetry can be a supernatural myth or a mirror image of human existence. It is an odyssey, it invites explorers to sail through blue dreams or languish in the wasteland of snow-white nightmares.

Poetry is a tribute to the soul’s desire to envision an altered state of reality. It refuses to be restrained in an English classroom or restricted to a library shelf.

Poetry isn’t exclusive to Shakespeare’s pen or strictly regulated by rhyme and meter on a page. It’s simply a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience found in language.

A poet will spend hours carefully choosing his or her words to create an emotional response.

Imagery from poetic language spills out into everyday life, competing with oxygen for its place in the environment. Poetry can be captured in Allen Ginsberg’s roaring howl and in the lyrics of your favorite song.

The lyrics of U2’s song “Kite” declare that life should be fragrant from the rooftop to the basement. Does your life smell like a bouquet of lilacs or a laundry basket full of dirty socks? Think of your life as a skyscraper with each floor representing one year of your time on the planet. Do you need Glade’s clean linen or country garden aerosol fragrance spray for floors 19 or 21?

Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill” laments, “I’m never where I want to be, and liberty she pirouettes when I think that I am free.” Have you asked yourself what you truly require to be happy? Do you know where you want to be during this era of globalization? Is your sense of personal freedom gracefully spinning out of control like a deranged ballerina in too tight shoes?

Annie Lennox whispers that she used to have demons in her room at night — so many monsters. Annie knows that everyone’s monsters are unique, choosing different hideaways and scare tactics from a large communal bag of monster tricks. Confronting these slimy devils is exhausting. Are you brave enough to ask yourself what keeps you awake at night? What lurks under the bed when the clock strikes midnight?

Bob Dylan croons that his woman left him crying with blues wrapped around his head. If a man has blues wrapped around his head, the stinging rawness of the musical style is penetrating his entire being.

Delta Blues music is dominated by fiery slide guitars and passionate vocalizing. The deepest of feelings are applied directly to the music, so lyrics are expressive and moving.

In some instances, according to the Blues Classroom, these lyrics “remain the highest flowering of blues songwriting as stark poetry.”

Have you ever felt completely sweet and lowdown about a former lover? How long did it take you to unravel the blues from your head, to escape the influences of love’s snakebite?

The human craving to adorn life with linguistic splendor is as natural as taking a breath.

As summer quietly surrenders to autumn, celebrate poetry in Amor Halperin words by throwing a party:

in the garden of the soul

where thoughts,

emotions,

the essence of things,

reaches us…