As long as one can appreciate the intricate beauty of a spider's web, life isn't so bad. This is the message Beth Frigard, founder of The Poetry Workshop, has brought to hundreds of Massachusetts seniors since 1994.

Trained in psychology, Frigard learned the power of poetry while at a retreat eight years ago. She was working as a caregiver at the time, and she decided to bring her new discovery into the community — to people who may never before have considered writing a poem. These, she believes, are the people who need poetry the most.

As a person's physical health begins to deteriorate, depression and frustration can wreck havoc on his or her mental health, Frigard says. But poetry reminds home- and institution-bound seniors that there is more to a person than a body.

“When our lives seem to be changing for the worse, when our bodies fail, and hopelessness settles in — which it is apt to do — we must actively sustain the spirit,” she says. “We must find ways … to celebrate the life we have lived and still are living.”

By asking questions designed to help participants think like a poet, Frigard coaxes beautiful images out of her workshop attendees, she says. She then works with the attendees to combine these images into a free-verse poem.

“We had just the right shaped bottle for catching fireflies on dusky summer evenings,” residents of Bedford, Mass.-based Carleton-Willard Village wrote. Another group of seniors at Norumbega Point of Weston, in Weston, Mass., compared birds' songs to the sounds of a symphony: “a cacophony of crows.”

The response to these workshops was so positive that poetry soon became a full-time job for Frigard. She wrote two books chronicling the workshop's process and cataloging some of the participants' poems.

But recently, Frigard began to think more about the challenges that face caregivers. “I think caregivers get burned out,” she says. “I think they feel trapped — particularly family members.

With caregivers in mind, she wrote Celebrating the Spirit with Poetry, a book designed to demystify the poetry-writing process and facilitate a nourishing relationship between the caregiver and the person receiving care. “Anything that can be done to better [caregivers'] state of mind needs to be done,” she says. “Creating this relationship — sitting down with a cup of tea and going through this process” is one way to lighten the load.

“I urge caregivers to take a few minutes each day to tend to the spirit of the one for whom they are caring, simply by guiding a conversation,” she continues. “You might ask, ‘What colors do we associate with October?’ ‘How does the air smell?’ or ‘When you were a child, what did you enjoy doing during this time of year?’”

In asking these questions, a caregiver allows the client or family member to find joy in the present moment. Frigard, who lost her husband suddenly in August, says she is living proof that poetry is strong medicine.

Frigard notes that, despite their challenging physical conditions, most workshop attendees write positive poems. “There's a lot of hope and appreciation in these poems,” she says. “The whole process encourages appreciation.”