Poets like Al Young and Jane Hirshfield and Sharon Doubiago and other poets who have read at Watershed know it. Slam poets know it. Hip hoppers know it. Even dot com poets know it. We all have to find our own way to relate to this issue if we want to stay alive.
Poetry can bring a lot to science, without sentimentality.
And this is a way for poetry to be of use. Science is spectrum analysis. Art is photosynthesis. Art saves lives. What art does is give us a sense of the whole, a sense that there is a universe out there that we are part of, that is worth saving, and that we are valuable because we are part of that cloth of community, and that we can, through our imaginations, through feeding our spirits, create the tools we need to save the whole.