The issue depends somewhat on whether poetry is the terminology of content or form. Is a poem a poem because of its content or what it is talking about or is a poem a poem because of the way it presents its talk? Many poets like to define poetry by its form alone, seldom claiming what subjects are suitable for presentation in poetry. They assert that the language of poetry is elevated, arcane, and some go so far as to say it is so individualized as to be a separate language. Charles Bernstein and the L=a=n=g=u=a=g=e poets come to mind in this last instance.
Yet Rich claims that poetry is like a secret code that spreads ideas in an underground way; in her essay, "The Hermit's Scream," she writes, "You cannot tell where or how they will connect, spreading underground from rootlet to rootlet till every grass blade is afire from every other." Despite the ludicrous metaphor of roots of grass on fire, the idea itself is untenable because of the fact that poetry, especially since the Enlightenment, has become so esoteric and parochialized that most people don't pay enough attention to poetry for poetry to serve such a messaging function.
No one goes to poetry to find out about politics: you want to know who might be running for president in 2008, OK, go look up a poem. Hardly. You want to know how people are feeling about who is running for president in 2008, so you go look up a poem. No again. Yet Rich says in her essay, "Blood, Bread, and Poetry: The Location of the Poet," that we fear poetry, because "it might persuade us [society] emotionally of what we think we are rationally against; it might get to us on a level we have lost touch with, undermine the safety we have built for ourselves, remind us of what is better left forgotten."
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