Heroes Not Zombies

David Suzuki writes (in “The Sacred Balance”)

Definition identifies, specifies and limits a thing, describes what it is and what it is not; it is the tool of our great classifying brain. Poetry, in contrast, is the tool of synthesis, of narrative. It struggles with boundaries in an effort to mean more, include more, to find the universal in the particular. It is the dance of words, creating more-than-meaning, reattaching the name, the thing, to everything around it.

Iain McGilchrist, in his astonishing, “The Master and His Emissary“, describes the brain’s left hemisphere approach to the world as analytical, naming, classifying, analysing. And he cites poetry as one of the great functions of the right hemisphere’s way of engaging with the world. The right hemisphere “struggles with boundaries”, sees the connections, synthesises, holistically discovers “the universal in the particular”.