SHIFTING HOW WE SEE: An Interview with Dr. Guillaume Thierry

Linguistic relativity—the hypothesis that language can change how we understand our worlds—is a theory that Dr. Guillaume Thierry extends to poetry. A neuroscience researcher for leading studies on poetry’s detection in the brain, Dr. Thierry defines poetry as “music with meaning.” As he says in this interview, “The incredible thing with poetry is it’s such a condensed form of power, of information, of imagery, of music, it’s so concentrated and pure that it’s like a jewel. It's like looking straight at the diamond rather than going around the landscape, and that concentration means through reading one poem, you can change.” What can this capacity for change say about our societal—and individual—trajectories? How can interdisciplinary communion help us find which questions we should to ask?…

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