The question ‘Why poetry?’ isn’t asking what makes poetry unique among art forms; poetry may indeed share its origins with other forms of privileged utterance. A somewhat more interesting question would be: “What is the nature of experience, and especially the experience of using language, that calls poetic utterance into existence? What is there about experience that’s unutterable?” You can’t generalize very usefully about poetry; you can’t reduce its nature down to a kernel that underlies all its various incarnations. I guess my internal conversation suggests that if you can’t successfully answer the question of “Why poetry?, ” can’t reduce it in the way I think you can’t, then maybe that’s the strongest evidence that poetry’s doing its job; it’s creating an essential need and then satisfying it. Richard Ford
About This Quote

The beginning of the quote is not generally considered to be a part of the original text by many people, and I do not believe it should be considered a part of the quote. The second sentence should be inserted. The first sentence explains what the author does not like about poetry, while the second sentence explains what he does like about poetry. The first two sentences tell us that each person has their own definition of poetry. The last sentence should explain why the author thinks that poetry should be able to satisfy such a need.

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