When people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn’t be read at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange and stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language—and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is.
It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.
Related Off-site Link:
Only Six Books: Excerpt From Jeanette Winterson’s New Memoir – The Daily Beast (March 6, 2012).
See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
The Potential of Art and the Limits of Rigid Orthodoxy to Connect Us to the Sacred
Remembering Wilfred Owen
"Thou Hast Thy Music Too"
After Loving
E. M. Forster's "Elusive Ideal"
Don Gorton on the Significance of Maurice (Part 1)
Don Gorton on the Significance of Maurice (Part 2)
At Swim, Two Boys: A Beautiful Novel
Love At Love's Brightest
Remembering Doris Lessing, 1919-2013
As the Last Walls Dissolve . . . Everything is Possible
Time and Remembrance in the Poldark Novels
"Hers Would Be the Perpetual Ache of Loss and Loneliness"
Passion, Time and Tide
Quote of the Day – November 22, 2013
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