This week, the Library of Congress named the 25th poet laureate of the United States. Amid the high-speed and siloed flow of internet-based information and entertainment, and the rapid decline in reading for pleasure, this announcement might seem anachronistic.
But for newly named laureate Arthur Sze – who, as a young man, abruptly transferred out of an undergraduate science program to study poetry – those very factors point to why poetry is both relevant and restorative.
“It helps us slow down and deepen our attention; it helps us uncover, discover things we didn’t know and things we didn’t know we already knew,” he said in a talk at the Library this spring. More than that, Mr. Sze said, “Poetry speaks to our deepest selves and connects us all, and it also speaks to the exigencies of our time.”
These include political and social divisions, as well as economic and environmental pressures that are straining bonds of democracy and community. Today’s poets are engaging with these issues and directly with the American public, offering pathways to uplift and connect.
For instance, just-retired Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s signature project, “You Are Here,” created poetry installations in seven national parks, to prompt reflection and conversations among visitors. Philadelphia-based Trapeta B. Mayson started the toll-free Healing Verse Poetry Line during the COVID-19 pandemic to inspire and support. It’s still going. Similarly, Poem-a-Day, set up by the Academy of American Poets, is distributed year-round via email, web, and social media.
A line from Mr. Sze’s poem, “Rift,” captures the spirit of these interchanges: “you followed the thread of poetry out of a maze into sunlight,” it reads.
Such poet-public connections underscore the innate human appreciation for language that inspires new ideas and fresh insights – characteristics that have applications beyond the arts, in the spheres of business and politics.
Forbes magazine quotes an executive who sought poets to serve as managers, seeing them as “our original systems thinkers,” able to wrest simplicity from complexity. The Harvard Business Review has pointed out that poetry fosters “a more acute sense of empathy” and creativity among managers. Not least of all, it noted, poetry can help teams be “invested with wonder and purpose.”
Former laureate Limón echoes the sentiment. For her, the Associated Press reports, the work of a poet is “to not lose the amazement, not lose the wonderment at the world.”
Mr. Sze, her successor, takes the conversation a next step. “Poetry is the essential language,” he has said, “the finite that puts us in touch with the infinite.”
