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Poetry, the imagination, and the creative life.

Saturday, April 09, 2011

Beautiful and Pointless

David Orr is the poetry critic for The New York Times, and he's on a mission to bring readers back to this under-appreciated art form. His new book is called Beautiful & Pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry. It's a slender little volume divided into six chapters, each demystifying an aspect of poetry.

The final chapter of Orr's book asks what might be the most important question: Why bother? Why read poetry at all?

And Orr has a rather surprising answer: "I don't know that people ought to bother. I think that poetry is one of those choices you make in life that's ... it's not really susceptible to reasoning or arguments."
Posted by Peter at 4:32 PM
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Poetry can communicate before it is understood. ~T. S. Eliot

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Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history. ~ Plato

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A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep. ~ Salman Rushdie

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Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason. ~ Novalis

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Poetry is what maintains our capacity for contemplation and difficulty. — Carolyn Forche

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Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild. — Denis Diderot

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Sometimes something wants to be said, sometimes a way of saying wants to be used. — Paul ValĂ©ry

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