by Andrew Moravick

Created on: December 18, 2008   Last Updated: June 01, 2011

The necessity of poets in a society is eternal and of the same importance as law and security. After all, poets are untiring sentinels on guard against ignorance, indifference, and complacency within their culture. When realism was running rampant in the late 18th century and early 19th century, it was the romantic poets that reminded the world of the value of passion, innocence, individualism, beauty, and nature. It was the first Greek poets who laid the groundwork for the development of philosophy, history, and religion as we know them today. So when asking, "is there a need for poets in society", first ask yourself, "where would we be without Homer, Shakespeare, William Blake, William Wordsworth, John Donne, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Frost, or any other bard whose words still resonate today?"

This debate began long before the internet, the computer, typewriter, or even the English language. It began in antiquity when the science inspired by the poets, philosophy, became critical of the account given by poets toward the workings of the universe. Plato and Aristotle often criticized poets, Aristotle writing in his metaphysics "bards tell many lies." However, Aristotle was not being critical of poetry itself, but the whimsical explanations they offered during his time. Furthermore, the philosophers' criticisms of poets only illustrate the true service such wordsmiths provide. Poetic accounts do not just entertain, or illustrate a scene; they enlighten the reader, awakening them to passion, outrage, inspiration, love and any one or many broad states within the human psyche.

In addition, those who question the importance of poetry seemingly must also be the same who question the importance of sense, emotion, and even thought. True and effective poetry stimulates the senses simply through words, all the while igniting the emotions, and setting the intellect on fire. If one may stand against sense, emotion, and intellect, then that person in a debate is a talking contradiction. To try to intellectually debate an issue maintaining the point of view that the intellect has no value is preposterous, and all arguments from that side could not be valid. Clearly, if one views thought to be of no value, then no thought and no reason will go into their argument, otherwise they would obviously be demonstrating the value of intellect.

Still, some may ask, "what do we need flowery words, pointless rhythm, and childish rhyme for in society?" Such questions only compound

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