Why Is Poetry Important? Part One

The question that is posed above is probably one the most self-fulfilling questions that I have ever asked. It presumes that poetry is important and that we should actually spend some time reading it. I have an interest in poetry and because of that it becomes important to me. That's not a real answer to the question though and I won't convince anyone that poetry is sooo important, just because I like it.

In my latest update, I talked about why I even bother writing this blog and I want to stress that I'm not a poet. I enjoy poetry and writing, but the closest I've yet come to actually doing something with it has been reviewing concerts. Like many other people, I have written some horrible poems in my past and some have been downright awful, even though I appreciated them very much, as they were needed to express my emotions in one way or the other at the time. I also play the guitar and at some point, songwriting seemed like a particularly brilliant idea, since I could play music and create stuff on my own. It wasn't all that successful and I'm much better at playing other people's songs and stripping them down to something that I enjoy.

Here's a little song I wrote to my wife after I got back from Afghanistan (beware, it's in Danish):

I'm the guy on the left hidden by the microphone for the entire song.

I'd like to give you all a long list of how many ways, I didn't understand anything about poetics and that it was some sort of ignorance that drove me to abuse a long-established tradition, but I don't regret any of the decisions that I made with this foray into the world of lyricism.

The ability to fail is one of the best aspects of being human and if we don't learn from any of these mistakes, we won't get any meaningful experiences out of life.

1. Poetry should be about experimenting.
2. Poetry should attempt to capture what it feels like to be human
3. Poetry should deal with these emotions in a manner that can be understood by other people.

This is an incomplete manifesto of poetic notions and I will likely disagree with some of the elements later in life, but right now these three points seem to be what I think of as most important in poetry.