Poetry as Deep Intelligence

Abstract

In this article, the authors argue that poetry provides a valuable if overlooked resource to the organizational behavior professor. The authors describe a workshop designed to evoke students’ innate poetic metaphors to enable a more lively engagement with course material. Because many of students’ personal, private, and emotionally charged experiences parallel the various topics in the text, the authors find that the organizational behavior course is particularly amenable to this approach. Finally, the authors present a qualitative assessment, conducted by them, in which students assess the workshop experience in their own words. Students find that the workshop adds complexity, surprise, and excitement to personal issues, transforms the climate of the classroom, and provides an energized backdrop against which the course makes sense in terms that are both personal and deep.