Embedding hypnotic suggestion in poetry

[paraplegicracehorse]

I've been thinking about poetry a lot lately. When read aloud it has quite a powerful trance effect. Has anyone experimented with embedding suggestions in poetry?

[wohermiston]

Erickson's case files refers to a book on hypnotic poetry. This is interesting because I am working on a script now that uses rhyming verse.http://discreplay.typepad.com/hypnotic_ ... sebook.pdf It's a rather hard read. Here is the pull quote. Further study in the lore of hypnotic induction comes from many unexpected quarters. A volume on hypnotic poetry (Snyder, 1930), for example, presents the thesis that there are two basic types of poetry: hypnotic (spell-weaving) and intellectualistic. The former tends to induce trance, while the latter appeals more to the intellect. The author discusses many of the literary devices that may induce a hypnotic effect, such as (1) a perfect pattern of sound and stress, with heavy vocal stress falling at half-second intervals; (2) absence of abrupt changes or intellectual
challenges; (3) vagueness of imagery, permitting each individual's personal unconscious to fill in the details; (4) fatigue for what we would call depotentiating habitual mental frameworks ; (5) the use of repetition or refrain; and (6) giving an unusually clear and direct suggestion or posthypnotic suggestion only after lulling the listener into an agreeable state with the foregoing. He goes on to point out how poetic inspiration and perhaps artistic creation in general always involve an autohypnotic state. A careful study of the poems he presents gives the hypnotherapist a broader conception of the creative work involved in every hypnotic induction.

[wohermiston]

To Follow up, the book seems expensive at $70, although a used copy may be findable. Here is a link to a review of the book http://www.unz.org/Pub/SaturdayRev-1931 ... 0?View=PDF some references to poems are given. which also led me to the the poetry foundation website https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems- ... tail/44885

[wohermiston]

I found a copy for $50 so I bought it. Should be an interesting read.

[paraplegicracehorse]

Thanks. I'll follow up on that.

Would love to see that script you're working up, too.

[Feverdream]

This is interesting.

Not all poetry is based on rhyming of course. That is what English speakers usually think of as poems, but poetry is really just a formulaic, structured kind of thought. Structuring thought is very much what we do when we induce hypnosis. Tracking the patterns is a good way to lure a mind into the state of focused distraction that is trance. Like eyes watching a swinging pendulum, a mind listening to a metronomic pattern of stressed syllables, or seeking to predict the upcoming rhymes, is a mind that is susceptible to suggestion.

Back to the idea I started with... regarding rhyming being only one way to impose structure and order upon a poem, but it not being the only way. Rhyming is actually quite fragile as a poetry technique... it doesn't translate well from language to language. Other patterns that hold together poetry, patterns based on the content of the lines, tends to hold up better.

Many religious scriptures (and other writings) from the ancient fertile crescent area have a hypnotic effect when read aloud, due to a pattern common to poetry written in the Semetic languages. Instead of hanging together based upon rhyme, they use a repetition of ideas. The same thought is restated, usually twice, but sometimes in a long stream of re-iterations. Sometimes, the thought is a little different each time, but still related enough to build a structure. The phenomenon is called parallelism. So, there are passages in the Old Testament, especially song like books like Song of Soloman and Psalms, which can be very trance inducing when read aloud, in the right cadence.

"But let judgment run down as waters,
and righteousness as a mighty stream."

"Set me as a seal upon your heart,
as a seal upon your arm:
for love is strong as death; and
jealousy as cruel as the grave:
the coals of love burn with fire,
they burn with an all-consuming flame.
Many waters cannot quench love,
neither can the floods drown it:
if a man tried to buy love with all his riches,
such an offer would be utterly scorned.

Unfortunately, some of the nuance is still lost, due to loss of word play and puns that were clear in the original.

Though I don't write my scripts as poems, at the best of times, I'm definitely using these ideas of embedding deep structure in the work, and that does come from a familiarity with writing poems in various styles.

I'm glad to be reminded of this, because I am wanting to write a script that draws imagery from Sumerian poems and related myths that I rather love, and it will be good to go back and read those poems, to let them take me into their rhythms, so that I can translate their essence into what I hope to make.

[wohermiston]

https://www.warpmymind.com/index.php?ga ... e_id=10093 Here is the link to the file.
I modeled this after Dr Seuss Sleep Book. The book on hypnotic poetry does stress that it is the meter of the verse that draws the listener in. I have found that writing in rhyme helps to stay purposeful, if that makes sense to the subject. It is alot of fun for me anyway. It has given me a new outlet to expand on. WOH