Opinion

Poets, why do poems matter?

Poets, why do poems matter?

“If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the Inquisition might have let him alone.” — Thomas Hardy

“Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.” — Gustave Flaubert

“Poetry is ordinary language raised to the nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.” — Paul Engle

“Mathematics and Poetry are... the utterance of the same power of imagination, only that in the one case it is addressed to the head, in the other, to the heart.”
— Thomas Hill

“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”— Rita Dove