Healing and Hypnotherapy Volume 5, Issue -3, 1 September 2020 | Page 18

It takes the three some time to board the bus
 what with the flames
 and water and ice But when they finally climb the stairs and take their seats
 the driver doesn’t even notice
 that none of them has paid because he is tortured
 by visions and is wondering
 if the man who got off at the last stop was really being mauled to death
 by wild dogs. This poem not only shows the inside of Denver Butson’s mind, but also tells something about my mind, as a person who likes this poem. I think this poem is a great example of how beneath the surface of everyday interactions, everyone has their own distortions, deletions, hallucinations, and negative hallucinations. Perhaps my liking this poem, which I discovered years ago, was an early indicator of my future career as a hypnotherapist. When it comes to poetry each person is allowed to have their own unique experience in it. Someone else might say that “Tuesday 9 a.m.” is symbolic of a crossroads in his/her life, or that it reminded him/her of family. Another may call it a cautionary tale about public transportation. The kind of poetry your clients gravitate to and their experiences in it can give you a lot of information for the hypnotic part of the session. For example, if my client said she was the woman at the bus stop who was drowning, I might put her on the well used imaginary staircase, but going up—out of the water, to higher and higher ground. Poetry as a Secondary Induction “Poetry, like music, is to be heard.” – Basil Bunting Gone are the days when you may have had to sit in a classroom and torture the meaning out of a poem—do they still do that in schools? I hope not. Poetry does not exist simply to convey meaning. The paraphrasable meaning of a poem is less than the poem itself. The sounds are where the meaning is just as much as the words. And if you have ever been to a good poetry reading, you know that poetry can induce hypnotic trance. The maternal lulling patter that I call “poet voice” is similar to hypnotherapist