Poetry *

At pains to show that poetry is at the forefront (another reason for hope, another form of hope), he (Milosz) asserts that what is new is that our future will not be determined by jets as the means of transport, or by a decrease in infant mortality, important as those things may be. "It is determined by humanity's emergence as a new elemental force; until now humanity had been divided into castes distinguished by dress, mentality, and mores." This transformation is causing the disappearance of certain mythic notions, "widespread in the last century, about the specific and presumably eternal features of the peasant, worker, and intellectual. Humanity as an elemental force, the result of technology and mass education, means that man is opening up to science and art on an unprecedented scale." Is the disappearance of religion in our lives any different from disappearance of some of the nineteenth century myths, embodied in imperialism, racial superiority and colonialism? He asks. No one mourns their passing no one foresees their return. ~ Page 452

As preparation and explanation of what poetry is, and seeks to be, and how it brings meaning to our lives and what type of meaning, Heaney en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seamus_Heaney can hardly be bettered "[A poem] begins in delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down it turns a course of lucky events and ends in a clarification of life -- not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion....in its repose the poem gives us a premonition of harmonies desired and not inexpensively achieved. In this way, the order of art becomes an achievement intimating a possible order beyond itself, although its relation to that further order remain promissory rather than obligatory. Art is not an inferior reflection of some ordained heavenly system but a rehearsal of it in earthly terms; art does not trace the given map of a better reality but improvises an inspired sketch of it." There are two points here that relate directly to our theme. One, that poetry offers clarification that is "not necessarily great," and two, that art intimates a possible order beyond itself. ~ Page 457