Aaron Belz : part four

Why is poetry important? 

Poetry is increasingly important, because, with the proliferation of general opinion and subreddits and comment threads, we increasingly take language and its possible meanings for granted. Poetry has the ability to hold words up to the light and see what colors refract through them—what memories and connotations, anxieties and images. Poetry stops words cold, and reading good poetry can make you feel as though the whole world is stopping. It’s like the old Sinatra song: “The music stopped, / but we were still dancing.”