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What makes people who usually don't write poetry feel inspired to express themselves in that medium with rhyming or unconstructed verse that bubbles from the deep and rises to the top? It is curious that even well-known painters, actors, boxers, and presidents turn to this form to say things that perhaps can't be expressed in any other way.
People use poetry as a way to say something vital about the core of their existence. Picasso, at age 54, reached a creative block in his paintings and sculptures and turned to writing poetry to process this difficult emotional time. Muhammad Ali used poetry before he fought a boxing match to pump himself up and intimidate his opponent. Marilyn Monroe wrote verse to communicate her loneliness and private vulnerability. Barack Obama wrote poems about his grandfather, among others, Marlene Dietrich's collection is filled with odes to past lovers, and Salvador Dalí's writings evoke a voice similar to his surrealistic, unconscious paintings.
Poetry's pure, imagistic language captures in a few words an extraordinary depth of feeling. In a sense, poems are like dreams filled with rich metaphors, which the reader then deconstructs to uncover nuanced layers of meaning. Through the words of each unexpected poet, we glimpse an interior life that may have gone unspoken, and we then have a chance to know them in a new way.