A friend recently said to me, "Poetry is the non-profit of literature." The public admiration for this particular artistic practice is as long-standing as the difficulty in securing practical support to back it up. Isn't it incongruous to live in a culture in which one of the greatest compliments given to a work that isn't poetry is that it is poetic, while little to no space is given to actual poetry?
I am laying down a sequence of thoughts I've had for a long time in order to open a conversation about alternative ways in which we can support poets. One reason People Who Aren't Poets should care about the state of Poets is that there is in fact (to contradict myself) poetry in things that aren't poetry, and it might very well bring you a moment of delight, which might in turn make everything ok for a spell; poetry is a kind of noticing, which can also function (like humor does) as an escape route from one potential meaning to another possibly more enjoyable meaning. And such a definition indicates that poetry can find its way into unexpected places.
