People think they can do without poetry. And they can. At least until they fall in love, lose a friend, lose a child, or a parent, or lose their way in the dark woods of life.
People think they can live without poetry.
And they can. At least until they become fatally ill, have a baby, or fall desperately, madly, in love. And yet, in spite of our need of poetry when life overwhelms us, our present society seems to look upon the poet with disdain. And the fact that it is an endangered species in our culture tells us that our culture is in deep trouble. We treat our poets as outcasts, lunatics, starvelings.