Poetry is a chronicle of the saddest and happiest moments experienced by people. In 1821, Percy Bysshe Shelley, an English poet, wrote “A Defence of Poetry” essay that provides strong arguments on the importance of poetry. As stated by Shelley (2019), a person catches fleeting reflections of thoughts and feelings through poetry, which are sometimes associated with a certain place or events, while sometimes they refer only to one’s inner life. Poetry marvelously transforms everything that exists, making beauty even more gorgeous and endowing ugliness with beauty. It allows combining delight and horror, sadness and joy, as well as eternity and change to connect everything that seemingly cannot be linked. Today, poetry is less popular, but its power is still strong.
In nowadays’ reality, people are less likely to be interested in reading poetic literary works. There are many resources on the Internet, which are libraries of both classical and modern poetry. Although they look more and more like warehouses, and people do not concentrate on such type of information, preferring more trendy resources with a lot of pictures, photos, and videos. Accordingly, information on social media is usually presented as brief notes, which do not take much time to read it. Moreover, the abundance of information and entertainment makes people superficial, while poetry requires reflecting and thinking critically to better understand its messages (Shakargy, 2020). In the 21st century, the population of the planet has grown so rapidly that management technologies and the achievements of psychology are used to convince people. What has now become poetry, and what is its place in the modern world?
Poetry appeals to feelings and is designed to express them, including love, enjoyment of nature, life itself, patriotic feelings, laughter, humor, and much more. It is probably one of the most extensive tools to express feelings and emotions through language, so that others can understand and share the translated messages and ideas (Shelley, 2019). The Internet allows publishing any materials, which has both advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, online publication provides a great opportunity of being heard by others. On the other hand, the quality and content of such publications are often questionable. The Internet changes the way people think about the world and themselves, and poor quality poetry can deteriorate this (Shakargy, N. (2020). Therefore, while reading poetry online, its authors and messages should be analyzed properly to avoid negative effects. Poetry cannot be worse because of online publications since the Internet is only a tool, but people’s perceptions and attitudes determine its impact.
Poetry awakens and enriches the human mind, lifting the veil over the hidden beauty of the world and helping to see everything from different perspectives. If I were to tell my parents that I would choose Poetry as a major, they would probably consider it with doubts. The majority of parents seem to fear that reading the literature and writing poems would not allow their children to earn money. Considering that income is a critical part of every person’s well-being, such doubts seem to be reasonable. Pearlstein (2016) notes that parents are afraid that their children would work as penniless baristas and schoolteachers after receiving the Poetry major. However, the perception of college as job training leads to misunderstanding the desires of students, the way the labor market works, and future unhappiness and dissatisfaction at unpleasant work. By pressing their children, parents do not allow their children to understand the meaning of life and create brilliant poems.
As for professional life, poetry is helpful for leaders who practice empathy and relationship building with employees. By reading poetry, not only leaders but also employees can learn to simplify complicated issues and address seemingly unresolvable problems. Poems are also useful to conceptualize a world around, which improves communication skills and minimizes misunderstanding. These advantages are recognized in professional communities. For example, the International Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine is one of the most valuable awards in the world. The symposium attracts scholars from around the world with broad interests in poetry, the humanities, and medicine. The integrated consideration of these subjects develops creativity, making people more open, conscious, and proactive in various spheres of life.
The need for poetry intensifies at a time when the amount of material wealth grows faster than the ability to master them according to the internal laws of human nature because of the domination of egoism and a lack of consciousness. Poetry is designed to evoke in the minds the desire to subordinate everything to a known order and rhythm, which can be called beauty and goodness. A poets’ ability to see eternal harmony in a person, despite his or her weaknesses which are only temporary vestments, is important for society. The inner beauty noticed by poets makes the world better by allowing readers to view the events, spaces, and people through various perspectives. It is possible to conclude that the great works of poets belong to the whole world and all times.
References
Shakargy, N. (2020). Internetica: Poetry in the digital age. International Journal of Cultural Studies. Web.
Shelley, P. B. (2019). A defence of poetry and other essays. Good Press.
Pearlstein, S. (2016). Meet the parents who won’t let their children study literature. The Washington Post. Web.