To point out the rain to each other seems about as useful as mentioning the fact that we are both walking on our hind legs. That may be exactly why it s useful. We have taken the trouble to name something that needs no naming, thus acknowledging our kinship while still being careful not to evoke some other world in which our kinship might be questionable. Twain probably had the truth in mind when he said that everyone talks about the weather but that nobody does anything about it. In fact, we talk about it precisely because we can t do anything about it.
Poetry is a profoundly conservative use of language.
It conserves not only values and ideas but the very language itself, so that even some grammatical forms that ought to have disappeared long ago are still around and useful for special effects. Prose is progressive and disruptive. It must subvert or elude the poetic qualities of speech to go about the business of logic and analysis. Discursive prose is essentially antisocial, subject to constraints and regulations that would be unsuitable, perhaps even rude, in speech. Writing is an audacious and insolent act.