Literature, poetry... It really doesn't matter in the real world, does it?

[LostPrincess13]

Does it?

[JBI]

I never realized poetry was not part of the real world.

That being said, it matters far more than one gives credit. Poetry, for instance, is the stuff nationhood is made of.

[Lokasenna]

Of course it matters.

[cacian]

I like to think what matter most is the mind behind it all but yes whatever reads right to you be it literature poetry then that is the essential.

[Paulclem]

If you line poetry up next to poverty, tragedy and war, well no, it doesn't seem to matter at the time. But these things require positive action to solve them. Where poetry may help is in the reflectve process after, such as in the war poets of WW1. They had a massive effect on attitudes before WW2. Poetry may help with personal reflection on personal tragedies and it might inspire a more selfless attitude to the poor as Blake did in Songs of Innocence and Experience. I reckon it is difficult to pin down why poetry might be important. After all you could say the same of music and art conpared to more immediate concerns, but the same eould apply.

[Shell Mcc]

If you line poetry up next to poverty, tragedy and war, well no, it doesn't seem to matter at the time. But these things require positive action to solve them. Where poetry may help is in the reflectve process after, such as in the war poets of WW1. They had a massive effect on attitudes before WW2. Poetry may help with personal reflection on personal tragedies and it might inspire a more selfless attitude to the poor as Blake did in Songs of Innocence and Experience. I reckon it is difficult to pin down why poetry might be important. After all you could say the same of music and art conpared to more immediate concerns, but the same eould apply.

Wow I couldn't have put it better myself.

Also why not enjoy entertainment for the pure pleasure of it. If life is to be enjoyed reading is one way to enjoy it. There doesn't have to be a social purpose behind it. Some people just read to forget to go to into an imaginary world. Others just do it to expose themselves to places they could not physically travel to or live a life they wouldn't choose in the real world

[MorpheusSandman]

When people say that poetry/literature/art doesn't matter, it's usually because they're only considering the entertainment value of such things against real world problems like poverty and war. However, as Paulclem said, it's underrated just how much the arts express and shape our attitudes about such things. Even art that argues for evil, like DW Griffith's Birth of a Nation, provides a medium by which people can come together and argue over something that leads to change. It's telling that after BoaN Griffith went on to direct Intolerance, expressing almost the opposite viewpoint. BoaN certainly had an effect on him. Art is also valuable in how it can get people thinking and talking about subjects they'd never really considered before, or how it can seemingly embody the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of other people besides the creator. I've spoken before about how when I saw the anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion it finally gave me a means for making sense of the hell I'd gone through years before, as well as a means for getting through it and over it. That's what great art can do that has very real effects on the lives of individuals and, by accumulation, entire cultures.

[stlukesguild]

"All art is quite useless."- Oscar Wilde

"Nothing is more useful to man than those arts which have no
utility." -Ovid

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."- John Adams, 2nd U.S. President 1735-1826

"Artists are the people among us who realize creation didn't stop on the sixth day."- Joel Peter Witkin, painter

"Artists are just children who refuse to put down their crayons."- Al Hirschfeld

"The allotted function of Art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as an example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good." -Tarkovsky

"How important are the visual arts in our society? I feel strongly that the visual arts are of vast and incalculable importance. Of course I
could be prejudiced. I am a visual art."- Kermit the Frog

[Paulclem]

There's also the subtle effect any literature might have upon the development of a person's attitudes. Does poetry affect people? In some way it might help to forge opinion. Religious poems certainly do.

[miyako73]

I don't know with other countries. Revolutions in my country were intensified or inflamed by nationalistic songs and poems.

[Paulclem]

I don't know with other countries. Revolutions in my country were intensified or inflamed by nationalistic songs and poems.

The Red army in WW2 were boosted by literature, such as extracts from Tolstoy's War and Peace and poetry such as by Konstantin Simonov. Apparently the poem Wait For Me was very popular. (I'm not familiar with his stuff but have read of it and the effect he had).

http://www.simonov.co.uk/biography.htm

http://www.simonov.co.uk/waitforme.htm

[stlukesguild]

The arts have always been employed as propaganda. Americans fought World War II to Hollywood films and news reels, pin-ups...


soundtrack of big-band jazz





... and a soundtrack of big-band jazz. This is the sort of utilitarianism that someone like Oscar Wilde was speaking against: the "use" of art to promote ideas or values other than those of the artist, be it that of the nation/state, the church, etc...

[miyako73]

I'm more interested in the use of poetry not as a propaganda but as a language or a narrative people fall back on to understand their collective emotion or, in the case of a revolution, what they are fighting for.

[Paulclem]

The arts have always been employed as propaganda. Americans fought World War II to Hollywood films and news reels, pin-ups...


soundtrack of big-band jazz





... and a soundtrack of big-band jazz. This is the sort of utilitarianism that someone like Oscar Wilde was speaking against: the "use" of art to promote ideas or values other than those of the artist, be it that of the nation/state, the church, etc...

It's a sentiment that I would go along with, but it gives some perspective to the question is poetry - or any art - important? It is because it can have a profound effect and can be so easily misused by politicians, governments etc.

[E.A Rumfield]

Nothing really "matters", but in this senseless world somehow you have to keep your head or hang yourself, it's all the same in the end. Your world is what you make of it, in my world the words of the Canadian poet Milton Acorn hold far more weight than the double talk of talking head politicians. It is important to express yourself creatively, otherwise you express yourself destructively as Henry Miller said more eloquently than I can.

A little side point, human beings are not the only creatures that express themselves. Off the top of my head animals that sing songs: dogs, birds (of course), whales/dolphins. I'm sure their are many more. Music is in the air, as is poetry. I read a book that said something of how poetry exists outside the page because poetry has it's roots in oral tradition and really poetry is the art of imitating speech. Whereas prose cannot exist outside the page. It has no connection to our world.