What do you feel poetry can accomplish that other forms can’t?
No other form distills language to its musical and lexical essence like poetry. It’s like the concentrate of a substance found in other writing in diluted form. This is why it was considered for millennia, in the west anyway, to be the highest form of writing. I certainly wouldn’t make that claim anymore, but its uniqueness remains. Because the best poems require the most precise language in its most mellifluous order, poetry remains the headwaters of expressive language.
Because of this I think it can, as well, slow us down and make us pay attention to the world in a way that’s much less encouraged now, and less do-able. When we have an hour, our minds race with achievements or tasks to be finished and cannot be still. Poetry offers this stillness, often by way of prolonged, focussed attention.
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