Title: Defining the Role of Poetry in Society: The Ongoing Conversation – Tufts Poetry Awards
Headings: Kingsley & Kate Tufts Poetry Blog
Kingsley & Kate Tufts Poetry Blog
May 10, 2017
Defining the Role of Poetry in Society: The Ongoing Conversation
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Content: Unfortunately, a good number of social justice issues are not able to be solved overnight, much less within a few years. In this way, the cathartic role of poetry is even more important than a social commentary one. So perhaps there is no singular role for poetry. Rather, poetry is meant to be our companion throughout every stage of societal awareness. This is evidenced through poetry’s multi-faceted ability to inspire us to action, highlight a previously unknown narrative, make us think critically, or simply to allow us to feel our humanity. In Conversations on the Craft of Poetry (1961, poet Robert Frost said, “Poetry is what is lost in translation.” Whether a particular poem translates the human ephemeral phenomenological experience in general into words, or translates the experience of one group of people to another, one thing is for certain: poetry isn’t going away anytime soon. Like society itself, it is likely that the role of poetry will be forever-changing—adapting itself to the needs of society as poets see fit, and as the human experience necessitates. I will close with an excerpt from What the Living Do by Marie Howe: