Why is poetry important?
I find this question, or versions of it interesting (e.g. “Can Poetry Matter”). Americans definitely circle back and around this idea and worry that poetry is perhaps not important. It seems partially to do with the fact that poetry is not linked to capital or is in a very tenuous way, and so can poetry have value if it doesn’t have “value.” Poetry has personally resuscitated me, led me to interesting, supportive communities, and taught me how to mediate and actively explore my curiosities and concerns. I don’t take its role lightly. As a professor of poetry for over two decades I see its transformative properties leaving tracks all over my students. Whether it’s by examining the tightly balanced syntactical units of a Gwendolyn Brooks poems, her documentary eye archiving the working class neighborhoods of Chicago, or Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s look at migration, selfhood and speech in her hybrid and fused chorus of voices in Dictée, these poets grapple with language to express and archive important lived experiences and to question the world. I have seen students, many marginalized ones in particular, step into areas that felt inarticulable and taboo. It’s a wonder.
Poetry is one of the oldest art forms, what we turn to when we grieve, when we protest, and when we celebrate. Poetry in its boundlessness straddles various animal/alien worlds that only it can do.
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