Poetry is not Penicillin

I don't know who said it first. I don't know who came up with the idea. I know who passed it on to me, and even from the first it disturbed me. I've fought with it since then, even as some vestige of it taints the enjoyment of my craft and plagues me with guilt.

Poetry is not penicillin. As if words cannot drag a soul back from the edge of oblivion. As if a story cannot spark an idea so grand it changes the course of history. As if the act of wrestling with communication so as to share some part of your soul to the world in the hopes of enriching it is a luxury.

Can words be used to self-aggrandize? Can they be cleverly chained together and traded for nothing more than entry into a circle of like-minded people patting each other's backs? Can they relentlessly shell enemies and cement long-held positions in unyielding, concrete thinking? Of course. Of course they can be luxuries or the means to social capital or weapons. Be that as it may, I can't agree with the sort of off-handed scorn I hear, as if treating a broken body is vastly more important than treating a shredded soul.

I have spent about fifteen years writing fanfiction, a category of writing known as poor man's literature. In that time as I scraped and clawed my way through each story, the feedback I received was incredible. I poured out my heart through these tales, and every single time I have received glimpses of my readers' hearts in return. They tell me how aspects of my story made them reconsider things in their own lives. They tell me how much they needed a story or a chapter like the one they just read from me. They tell me, sometimes, that they drew closer to God, even through stories that do not explicitly mention Him.

Not every story needs to be a masterwork. There is a place for entertainment and a relaxing piece of reading. But don't tell me there's no medicine to be had in a poem, or a fable, or a carefully crafted series. Don't tell me the soul has no needs to be sated or wounds to be bound up for it to continue its journey on a road this long and hard.

Poetry is not penicillin?

Man does not live by bread alone.