Do We Need Poetry?

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.