Against barbarity, poetry can resist only by confirming its attachment to human fragility like a blade of grass growing on a wall while armies march by.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Poetry is man's rebellion against being what he is.
In a war situation or where violence and injustice are prevalent, poetry is called upon to be something more than a thing of beauty.
One characteristic of modern poetry is that arrangement of parts which strikes many people as being violent or obscure.
I don't like poetry that just slaps violent words on a canvas, as it were.
The Resistance is a moral certainty, not a poetic one. The true poet never uses words in order to punish someone. His judgment belongs to a creative order; it is not formulated as a prophetic scripture.
By definition, poetry works with qualities and dynamics that mainstream society is reluctant to face head-on. It's an interesting phenomenon that by necessity, poetry is just below the radar.
Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.
There have always been great defenses of poetry, and I've tried to write mine, and I think all of my work and criticism is a defense of poetry to try and keep something alive in poetry.
Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.
Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.