S01E05: Does Poetry Even Matter?

For S01E05 of GorPod, we discuss the accessibility of poetry. We often hear that poetry just isn't accessible to people; it's difficult, convoluted, unecessary. Why can't people just speak in plain language? Why dress it up in fancy forms, as poetry does? We show from several examples that poetry is, in fact, accessible, and always has been. We read passages from the Iliad; from Lovelace; from Sassoon; and from Kilmer, to see the very clear, yet very beautiful and even haunting, meanings they express in their poetry, and how it is expressed far more clearly in verse than it ever could have been in prose. We show that poetry is supposed to be, adn historically has been, for the masses, for regular people, but that modernity has corrupted it into an art form appreciated only by the elites, and not even by most of them. We end with an exhortation to reclaim this great human art away from the academics and for humanity. Our Goretti poem this episode is <a href="http://gorettipub.org/run_race.html">Death Has Been Cheated Once, a relatively complex structure that is nevertheless a good example of the principles we discuss: a clear, yet lyrically interesting and compelling expression of a fundamental Christian idea.