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Whether it's widely read or not, poetry has the potential to be profoundly moving and to really touch us. Perhaps more than any other mode of communication it allows a great range and depth of emotion to be attached to very few words producing, when done well, an immensely powerful effect.
I wouldn't be surprised to discover that most people don't read poetry at the moment. That doesn't mean that there are very large numbers of people that do. Just take a look at the internet: the number of people writing poetry suggests to me that they, at least, really think it matters.
There's something of a philosophical character to "is it worth the time and energy". For whom? To do what? If you get something out of reading or writing poetry then sure, it's worth the time and energy. If you don't then, well, I guess that's a great pity and perhaps it's worth giving it another go, but perhaps it isn't "worth it" -- to you. I'm not directing that at anyone in particular and, from the phrasing, I get the impression that AgentOrange does get something out of poetry, but I'm sure there are people who'd say that they didn't.
Many people that don't even consider poetry know a great deal of well known lines and these have managed to pervade the public consciousness, so there's obviously something universal there.
Poetry is also a very broad, all-encompassing banner. You could equally as, Is "the novel" a worthwhile concept?
Some of T. S. Eliot's work is breathtaking, "I will show you fear in a handful of dust". Some of Ginsberg's is no less so, "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness" -- how's that for an opening. They write utterly differently, but they both have a great deal of power to affect the reader. Like any art-form, it's an intensely personal thing.
What's your opinion? Perhaps you could add it to the discussion board?
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I think you're living proof that poetry is relevant. Poetry is about conveying emotions through the use of words. It's not something that's easy to do. Ideas that can be broken down easily are very well suited to prose, which I think is why it's so much more popular. But conveying emotions in a compact form is very difficult. So the exchanging of emotions through the written word has fallen out of popularity. It is easier to convey emotion (and ideas) through motion pictures, which is why that medium is so popular today.
But even if only a small group of people can successfully exchange emotions through poetry, then it's worthwhile. Think about it this way. How important has it been in your life to connect with large crowds of people versus connecting with one other person? In all likelihood, the connection with one person has been of more value to you than the connection to a large group. So even if poetry is no longer an effective means of exchanging information, it does have value if the poet and at least one reader are able to make a connection. If a poet is able to enrich at least one other person, his or her efforts were worthwhile.
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Sources: My Opinion
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For my part, I believe poetry enriches life and sharpens the senses. It is easy to get inured to the beauty of life because we are all so preoccupied with the everyday process of living. Poetry snatches us up, makes us think and be moved, and makes us feel more alive. A number of people have put it more eloquently than I, though.
A month before he was assassinated, John F. Kennedy gave a speech on the purpose of poetry in honor of Robert Frost. He said, in part:
When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses, for art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstones of our judgment. The artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an officious state. The great artist is thus a solitary figure. He has, as Frost said, "a lover’s quarrel with the world." In pursuing his perceptions of reality he must often sail against the currents of his time...
A professor at MIT, John Hildebilde, has a page on his rather interesting website devoted to "The Purpose of Poetry." ( http://web.mit.edu/lit/www/dutchiamb/purpose.html), He quotes several poets on the subject. Here are a couple of the quotes I like best:
Adrienne Rich:
Poetry wrenches around our ideas about our lives . . . Poetry will always pick a quarrel with the found place, the refuge, the sanctuary . . . Even though the poet, a human being with many anxious fears, might want just to rest, acclimate, adjust, become naturalized, learn to write in a new landscape, a new language, poetry will go on harassing the poet until, and unless, it is driven away.
Seamus Heaney:
In the activity of poetry . . . there is a tendency to place a counter-reality in the scales, a reality which can only be imagined but which nevertheless has weight because it is imagined within the gravitational pull of the actual. Poetry has to be a working model of inclusive consciousness. It should not simplify. . . Poetry can make an order as true to the impact of external reality and as sensitive to the inner laws of the poet’s nature as the ripples that rippled in and rippled out across the surface of the water [in a scullery bucket Heaney recalls from his farm childhood].
For those of us who love and appreciate it, it’s hard to think of life without poetry.
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Sources: http://www.theatlantic.com/ideastour/politics-and-presidents/kennedy-excerpt.mhtml; http://web.mit.edu/lit/www/dutchiamb/purpose.html
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Most poems I have seen or read are written in a style that I don't appreciate, metaphors, flowery language, etc. Or are so dense with mystical meaning that I just don't get it. I think students today and in the past 50 years have been bombarded with this kind of poetry, and have been taught that it is the "correct" kind.
But Dorothy Parker, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, for example, write in straightforward, everyday language that I can appreciate and understand. There is a book called "Sutured Words," contemporary poetry about medicine, all written by doctors, I believe, which is very moving and straightforward, and certainly relevant. Amazon carries it.
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Sources: personal opinion and experience
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There don't really seem to be any young upcoming superstar 21st century poets coming online these days and I have to conclude that these young talents are going into some other creative endeavor that allow for a living wage. Maybe their hidden talents will become evident later, like Wallace Stevens, who "had a real job."
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