This book explores the deep, imaginative, and creative power of poetry as part of the human experience. How poetry provides insight into human psychology is a question at the beginning of its theoretical development, and is a constant challenge for cultural psychologists and the humanities alike. Poetry functions, in all ages and cultures, as a rite that merges the beauty, truth and the unbearable conditions of existence. Both the general and the particular can be found in its expression. Collectively the authors aim to evoke a holistic understanding of what poetry conveys about decision making and the human search for meaning. This ground-breaking collection will be indispensable to scholars of clinical and theoretical psychology, philosophy, anthropology, literature, aesthetics and sociology.

Section I. Poetic Resources as Tools to Make Meaning.- Chapter 1. A liaison of poetry and tattoos: The multivoicedness in Edgar Allan Poe's poem “The Raven”.- Chapter 2. Beauty of the Back.- Chapter 3. Poetry In and For Society: Poetic Messages, Creativity, and Social Change.- Chapter 4. The Poetics Within Performance Art: The Developmental Nature Of Artistic Creative Processes.- Chapter 5. Commentary: Poesis and Imagination.- Section II. The Poetic Roots of Creativity and Imagination.- Chapter 6. Living Against and Persistence of Being: Poetic Sharing of Being Sensitive Within Antagonistic Worlds.- Chapter 7. Rimbauding Worlds: Creation of Deranging Senses.- Chapter 8. Living in Verse: Sites of the Poetic Imagination.- Chapter 9. Apprehending beauty: Ordinary people’s experiences of the ‘poetic instant’ in India.- Chapter 10. “The Tune Without The Words”: Dickinson`s Verses In a Jazz Ensemble: A Case Study on The Poetics of Music and The Musicality of Poetry.- Chapter 11. Commentary: On poetics, art and life.- Section III. The poetics of daily life.- Chapter 12. Imagined Sea.- Chapter 13. Living with "Encantados": Dances of poet and scientist within the self.- Chapter 14. Poetic gestures of life.- Chapter 15. Dialogue as poetic imagination in the Way of Tea.- Chapter 16. Commentary: The Poetics of Daily Life: The Invisible Becomes Visible.- Chapter 17. Conclusive Remarks: Writing Toward the Core—Poetically Framing a Science of Cultural Psychology