Do We Need Poetry? Poem by Paul Hartal

This question, for my part, is almost like asking: do we need air?
For, notwithstanding the hyperbolic simile, I believe that a world
without poetry would be depressing. It would suffocate the soul.
Life without poetry would be diluted and attenuated.

I view poetry as a deeply meaningful part of the human experience.
Poetry contributes significantly to human knowledge, development
and growth. It opens our eyes to the world, reveals
its hidden dimensions, helps us to discover uncommon truths
and to see life in its fixed flux and budding, unfolding in new ways.

Poetry also helps us to overcome difficulties, to develop empathy
and insight, to broaden our horizons, to amplify our sense of beauty,
to uplift our spirit, to express and share the joys and sorrows of life.

A creative art, poetry rises as a distilled experience
out of profound emotions, lofty thoughts and noble ideas,
finding expression in insightful words, in broad and airy avenues
of intriguing symbols, puzzling metaphors, in chiming rhymes
and drumming rhythms. Poetry explores the world, it feels the pulse
of the throbbing universe.

Moreover, poetry also fulfills a remedial function
advancing as a therapeutic tool, a curative force
for the intrinsic mender, our hidden inner healer
meshed within the magical realm ofhuman consciousness.

Now, imagination plays a central role in all forms of creativity,
including poetry.Shakespeare' s Theseus
in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" proclaims:
"as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown,
the poet's pen turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
a local habitation and a name."

Is science more important than poetry?
Well, not necessarily. Many might, of course, object to such
judgment.After all, they would point out, science involves
serious knowledge, whereas poetry advances through fancy
and imagination. Nevertheless, no less a scientific genius
than Albert Einstein held that imagination is more important
than knowledge, because "knowledge is limited to all we know
and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world,
and all there will be to know and understand."

Now, apart from imagination and intuition, in my vision,
the heart of poetry is the poetry of the heart. And since poetry
is the essence of all varieties of inspiration and creativity,
I extend the boundaries of poetry to music, painting, dance,
as well as to every other art form.

Furthermore, in the light of the fact
that there is science in art and art in science,
I view all creative endeavors as poetic thrusts.
We live not only in a physical world but also in a symbolic one.
Language, poetry, music, art and science are all part of this symbolic
universe. Like in Niels Bohr's theory of complementarity,
wherein light is both matter and wave, art and science represent
complementary symbolic systems through which humanity
structures and interprets reality.