Why We Need Poems

Because the news tells you what happened but a poem tells you what it felt like. Because you've had a thought— you know the one— the one that sits in the back of your throat like a word you can almost remember but not quite. And then you read a poem and there it is. Someone found it. Someone already said it. And the relief is like a door you didn't know was closed finally opening. Because grief doesn't come with instructions and poems are the closest thing we have. Because a child who memorizes a poem carries a companion for life— a small, indestructible thing that fits in the mind and comes back at the strangest times. Because the world is too fast and a poem makes you stop. Not think. Not analyze. Not scroll. Just stop. And feel the weight of fourteen words that somehow say what a thousand couldn't. Because love has been described a trillion times and every new poem about it proves it hasn't been described enough. Because you are alive. And being alive is the strangest thing that will ever happen to you. And poems are the only art form that treats this with the appropriate amount of astonishment. That's why. That's the whole argument. Read one. Any one. And see if the world doesn't look slightly different when you look up.