Can poetry matter? Robert Frost weighs in.
Dana Gioia, poet and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, famously wrote an essay and then book called Can Poetry Matter? President John F. Kennedy weighed in on the matter decades earlier, speaking at the memorial of Robert Frost. This post comes to us via poet and classicist A.M. Juster, who writes: “Can’t really imagine any political leader saying these things today, what with the U.K. slashing humanities across the country and the U.S. continuing on with its billionaire infatuation.” Hear, hear.
That Kennedy speech is precisely discussed in the first chapter of "The Music of Time. Poetry in the Twentieth Century", by John Burnside, which I started to read a few weeks ago. Can't recommend this book enough, it's absolutely awesome.
It's sad to see the humanities slowly lose traction in a society that has lost its centering points. STEM, tech -- we certainly need them, they make up a key part of the framework, but in the end I believe they are just containers that traffic ideas in an ever more efficient manner. So much so, that the endless tidal wave of "content noise" is drowning out deeper, long term thinking.
So, if you are void of an ethical framework, logic, and critical thinking skills, the vacuum will be filled with distraction and, ultimately, tiny steps toward destruction.
I think that Huxley, Orwell, Postman, and McLuhan are all comparing notes with each other right now and saying I told you so.