Did you know a poem written by a homesick student in 1998 ended up changing French law?

That's one of the things I went down a rabbit hole on for Edition #53, which went out this Sunday, to celebrate last week's World Poetry Day 💫

Diana Ferrus was studying in the Netherlands when she wrote a poem about Sarah Baartman, a South African woman whose remains had been held in Paris for nearly two centuries. The poem became so powerful it was eventually incorporated into French law and helped bring Baartman home.

That story pulled me into a bigger question: what is happening in your body when a poem lands? Turns out the physical response has a name: frisson. The prickle, the throat tightening, the urge to read a line again. Poetry triggers it more reliably than almost anything else because the brain processes rhythm, metaphor, and compression differently from regular language, and that combination interestingly hits the reward system.

The edition also goes into the surprisingly dark histories hiding inside nursery rhymes, and the concept of duende, Federico García Lorca's word for that untameable quality that separates a technically correct poem from one that gives you chills.

The question I shared this week: is there a line of poetry, a lyric, or even a nursery rhyme that has stayed with you longer than you'd expect? What do you think it knows about you that you haven't quite put into words yet?

Curious to see your answer 👀

You can check out this week's edition here: https://curiositysavedthecat.com/p/53-why-does-a-poem-give-you-chills