While Shakespeare has enlightened us on suiting its use to the interest of the hopeless romantic, some less internationally-recognized poets like Indonesia’s Chairil Anwar has demonstrated to his nation the vital importance of poetry in the struggle for independence. But whichever it may be—a social device or genuine form of expression, poetry has always existed to serve more than a single, uni-dimensional purpose.
In today’s era of the most technologically enlightened, however, the art of poetry seems to face an endangerment much fiercer than anything it has ever been in close encounter before: a competition from a ‘professional’ vision which regards anything to be of value only as long as they possess practical qualities.
Findings from multiple surveys hint on an all-time-low interest in poetry. “Poetry is dead,” they say, and its murderer most probably would be the common sense that listing “I read Hamilton and Dylan Thomas for breakfast” adds no value to a resume. But does this supremely hold true? Can all of us really function solely on numerical efficiency without the reassurance that we are, after all, serving a more profound, meaningful cause?
It can’t possibly be true. Otherwise, every advertisement in our industry would simply show the technical specs for every fancy new phone, or list the horsepower and torque of each new car. Instead, what remains central in advertisement is convincing us that the advertised product is laced with qualities of our desire—be it happiness, trust, sympathy, assurance, company, or love. Thus, the success of advertisement—much like everything else in our industrial world—hinges not upon the conveying of its value, but rather by convincing us that it is a vessel of profoundness and meaning.
But if by possessing more, we only crave for more, then the ideal sold to us by our industry through advertisement might not be so true after all. Otherwise, we’d have to agree that we have an insatiable thirst for profoundness and meaning. What is more likely is that profoundness and meaning reside somewhere else; perhaps within the genre we had dismissed as obsolete for lacking practicality; perhaps our next step forward is to look back—in the removed dusty covers of books of poetry.
It may take a detour to our quest for meaning. It might seem nothing less than a time-walk to an age of antiquity. And there may lie the biggest problem with poetry, or so we are led to believe, that it conforms not to our futuristic interest, the so-called modern vision.
It will still hold true that the compilation of sophisticated diction may still not add any relevant entry to our CV. However, in the events where that very CV is successful in bringing us a new office and new suit to wear, poetry may complement us with the profoundness we need to carry on.
Because poetry, and art in general, does nothing less than equipping us with passion. And while we may run out of professional work ethics after exhausting series of chases with deadlines, I honestly never think we would ever find ourselves in short supply for passion of being human.
JC
writeinwhites 