Nonetheless, in critical and scholarly approaches to poetry, there had been an idea that the written text was the gold standard of the poem, and that performances were secondary. The idea that poetry should be read out loud to be understood has never entirely gone out of favor. Poetry readings are treated not primarily as an aesthetic activity, but as a social activity. They seem to gather every Friday night at Lincoln Center to hear each other play, and the audience claps and seems very enthusiastic. They re playing things like violins . . .
Poetry operates on a small scale.
This intimacy of scale is poetry's great value in this society, because it offers possibilities that are not available in mass culture. It's a dimension in which the language, the sound, and the particular words in the particular order are not dispensable. This indispensable quality is a fundamental value for a culture that tends to treat such features as insignificant. Poetry puts us back in touch with the ways in which meaning is generated and the musicality, the aesthetic pleasure, of this medium. It considers language as having primary value within the constrained context of the poem, of the poetry reading.