"...I feel that everything I know about being human has been deepened by the poems I've read." -- Jane Hirshfield, poet, as quoted in, ten poems to change your life again & again by Roger Housden.
He writes further, "John Keats spoke of this humanizing power too when he said, 'Poetry should...appear almost as a Rememberance.'"
Truth be told, some memories are better than others, and poetry has the ability to still the mind, calm the heart, and soothe the soul.
Housden writers on the importance of poetry,
"There's a headstone in a Long Island graveyard--the one where Jackson Pollock is buried--that I think encapsulates the value and life-giving qualities of poetry in a world in which there are so many sorrows. It says,
'ARTISTS AND POETS ARE THE RAW
NERVE ENDS OF HUMANITY.
BY THEMSELVES THEY CAN DO
LITTLE TO SAVE HUMANITY.
WITHOUT THEM THERE WOULD BE
LITTLE WORTH SAVING.'"
