Poetry is important in the lives of people for many reasons.
Some of these reasons are more trivial than others, but poetry lives on and never dies. Do we take the time to wonder why that is? Poetry can be as simple as food for the soul. It can be something more profound, such as a way to get morals and legislative ways across to the world. A lot of this has gone unnoticed, since poetry is not usually seen or noticed by people on an everyday basis.
People tend to have to look for poetry. It is not something that is in plain site within our society. People who read poetry tend to be the people who prefer poetry reading as a hobby.Poetry can be just a simple expression of what someone has to say.
It is a way to express our inner most feelings, and to make those feelings heard by others through the choice of our words. The way that words are formed on a page, can make all the difference in how they will be interpreted by the people around us. This is usually done using metaphors and other forms of abstract phrasing that can make a person really think. This allows things to be viewed in a manner in which someone never has before.
It is a way of getting people to read between the lines of an experience or something being said.Poetry puts into words, the very things that the average person finds hard to express. It gives us a type of doorway to our dreams and imagination. It takes the power of everyday words, and gives them the strength to communicate.
What is ordinary and bland in everyday words, becomes special within the world of poetry. There is something in many daily lives that is missing. This empty spot, is often filled with poetic words and stories. It was the poet William Carlos who believed that although poetry could not give us much on the way of news, it could give us much in the way of soul (Fitz-Randolph 1).
Many famous people of poetry believed that you could tell when a person wasn’t 2 Why is Poetry Important? happy or lacking soul. It was this that was perhaps a gauge of how much poetry one let into their life. To be able to take poetry to heart, was said to make someone a more full person. This, in turn, brightening their sole.
Poetry has said to be used for the purpose of keeping myth alive. There have been many debates of where myths originate from. It is believed that keeping myths alive through poems, helped to make sense of a nonsensical universe.It was a way to explain what science and religion could not.
Even today, many mythologists find it striking that through the years poems retaining myth, have never lost their relevance. Poetry has been used as a way of explaining god, man and nature in a relevant way to the human race. It is a way to dig deep into the meaning of the universe and ourselves. It takes people away from trying to find the facts to believe something.
Instead, they rely on the faith that the feelings of the words within the poetry bring to them. Poetry in many ways can be looked at like religion.We need to have some form of faith to believe in its words and messages. It is the words of man that gives beauty to the world from the eyes of many.
We all have a tendency to embrace poetry in the same way we embrace religion or science. We get a feeling of contentment from poetry that can not be gained from other revenues. It can give us strength, courage and understanding. Poetry can give people the feeling of being united.
All poetry is written by the hand of a person ,that in turn, moves another person with their words. It tells us that someone out their does know how we feel.Poetry is said to take on a very important part in our society, that many people may not realize. Poets have been said to be the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
Many poets wrote of the wrongs and rights of policy and politics, but in a very moral and non-threatening 3 Why is Poetry Important? way. Many poets were revolutionary minded, out to change legislation. Poetry had an advantage in doing this. Not only did poetry move people, but it’s messages tended to stick with people.
It was catchy and rhythmic. In the eighteenth century, poetry was used as a link between public and commercial themes, oth global and domestic.. It had a very large part in forming ideas of the slavery movement and feminine ideas to more masculine ideas.
Big time poets used their words to sway society and worldly opinions. This is not widely known today through the eyes of the common societies. Poetry has been used to educate in what many would call an aesthetically pleasing way. What the news could not often get across to people in hard times like the Holocaust, it is poetry that could.
It is seen as a different way of getting across to people. Poetry can touch the heart and soul in a way that news and experience often doesn’t.It may have shown anger, bias, and disagreeable content, but it spoke to people in a way that they were able to better take in and absorb the messages being sent..
Throughout history, poetry has been important because it gives us a representation of what previous generations found to be of importance. You can almost read the works of poets through time, and learn the history of the world, during good times and bad. Poetry in many cultures is a tradition. It is of high importance to read the poetry of others and the way of their words.
Poetry in some cultures helps to define who they are as a people.It is also what is used to link their present and past. It is useful in the teaching of others within their culture as well. Looking at a more lighter side of poetry, we can look at the integral part that is plays when help children learn to read.
It is especially helpful for those children who are learning English as 4 Why is Poetry Important? a second language. Although the historical, religious and personal importance of poetry will never lose it’s place, there is one very modern aspect that it is being used for. Poetry is a very integral part of children’s learning overall, and the learning of language skills.Poetry makes learning fun for children, and gives the opportunity to learn through association.
It is a way to help instill the English language in a very non-intimidating way. In classrooms where English is being learned as a second language, poetry helps to disconnecting the speaking aspect from the spelling and writing, to narrow the focus. This allows the children an opportunity to have a better grasp all aspects of how they will use the language overall. It helps children identify, words, word patterns, word usage and much more!Poetry has been used through history within children’s stories and nursery rhymes.
Poetry offers a different aspect of language and form for children. It is read differently from ordinary text in the way that it is read by both the eye and the ear. This gives children a wider variety of experiences with reading as well. It is said that children can start to grasp literary understanding and critical evaluation at a very young age.
Reflective reading and comprehension lead to a higher level of analysis in children. Economics today is another area to look at poetry.The poetry business is booming with publishers hiring people to write their creative thoughts into poetry. Card companies offer people to write poetic gestures to be bought during the holidays, and people pay for the education to learn how write creatively within the guidelines of poetry.
There are people that will write the perfect poem for you based around a certain cost. The money of poems does contribute to the economy. 5 Why is Poetry Important? Poetry can be used as a form of therapy. Many therapists say that writing and poetry to express your feelings can be therapeutic.
Writing your feelings with the intense words of poetry can relieve stress, anxiety, depression, etc. It can help people to get through the hard times they are facing. Some people are better at expressing themselves in writing. Although it is obvious that poetry has proven it’s test of time, when it comes to importance, personally, and society, everyone can look at poetry and benefit from many of these factors that poetry can represent.
It is a part of all of us in one way or another. We have all had an experience with poetry no matter how large or small. There is nothing in this world that poetry doesn’t cover.Yet, many of us are unaware of this unknown world.
If poetry has been shown to have such an impact, why is it not used more openly? It may have to do with the increased freedoms that people have today to express themselves. We are now able to have more control over our lives than people did years ago. Poetry has many places among society and people as individuals. Although it is not widely thought of, maybe we should turn more to poetry when looking for an answer to our questions.
Many people who never even think of poetry through their lives, tend to use it at times of deep importance.These times may include weddings, love, funerals, a birth, etc. It is a way to reach out to the heart and soul. Reading poetry of certain events may even help us change our political and religious views to make better decisions.
If poetry were more out in the open, I think it could steer people on many directions. It would be a change of pace from the everyday rhetoric that is heard in society on a daily basis. When trying to think of the importance of poetry, I think we need to ask ourselves, where would we be without poetry?Works SitedRich, Adrienne. “Legislators Of The World.
” 18 November 2006.Guardian.co.uk <http://www.
guardian.co.uk/books/2006/nov/18/featuresreviews.guardianreview15>.
Stanlis, Peter. “Poetry As Revelation.”<http://www.frostfriends.
org/stanlis3.html>.Fitz-Randolph, Megge. “The Importance of Poetry and Myth In Daily Life.
” 8, July 2008. <http://poetry.suite101.com/article.
cfm/poetry_and_myth>.Keith, Jennifer. “Why Poetry.” (2007) The Eighth Century <http://muse.
jhu.edu/journals/the_eighteenth_century/v048/48.1keith.html>.
Hadaway, Nancy, Vardell, Sylvia, Young, Terrell. “Scaffolding oral language development through poetry for students learning English.” (1, May 2001).<http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-5906531_ITM>
Why You Should Vote
In 2001, Secretary of State Sam Reed launched a program that encourages young people to vote. Dubbed as “Take Pride in America and Vote” the program included a tour through five Washington schools. Mr.
Reed says that young citizens should remember that they are fortunate enough to enjoy true freedom and democracy, and that they should remember their privileges and exercise their voting right (A Case for… 2001).
The program was created by Reed as a response to the low turnout of young people in the 2000 election.Secretary Reed laments that with greater participation, Washington’s young people could have made a difference (A Case for…
2001). More than Numbers Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt writes that the odds that your vote will affect the outcome of any election is very slim.
Dubner and Levitt then asks, “why bother to vote? ” adding that voting is a waste of time. Fortunately, a New York Times Magazine informal poll shows that 48% of respondents disagree with Dubner and Levitt, while only 14% agreed that voting is a waste of time.The other 38% thinks it’s sometimes a waste, and sometimes it’s not. Rightly so.
Ulysses Currie writes that the voting process is the “heart and soul” of representative government. It is through voting that one can make their voice heard. Currie also puts in statistics that makes the saying every vote counts literally true. Currie cites JFK’s winning the presidency by an equivalent of just one vote per precint, as well as a lot of state and local elections that have been determined by one vote (Currie, 2006).
Daily Lobo’s editorial during the 2001 New Mexico mayoralty elections says that if one doesn’t vote, one loses the right to complain and ignores one of the most substantial civil liberties one should enjoy. The New York Times published a letter to the editor noting the same. The letter-writer, Max Greis, writes that people who have no participation in the political system, or those who don’t vote, condemn themselves to living under a bad government. Greis argues that the only way to get quality people as leaders is to vote for them (Greis, 2001).
Let’s veer away from the guilt-inducing propaganda that expounds on your duty as an American citizen to vote. Let’s try and put some obscure and hard-to-define concept like patriotism and nationalism to rest. Let’s not compare our liberties to those of some far-flung country where citizens take to the streets just so they could be heard. Let’s focus on the facts.
The very foundation of our democracy lies in it being a government by the people, for the people and of the people. The only way to achieve that is through voting. Currie is right, each vote counts.Each vote carries with it our voices.
Each vote would determine what you as a citizen wants for himself, his community and his country. And for most of us, voting is the only active participation that we have in choosing our leaders and government. Greis is right. The only way to get quality leaders is to vote them into office.
One would lose their right to complain if some corrupt and immoral knucklehead gets into office and ruins everything, because he didn’t even go out and try to prevent the said knucklehead from getting elected in the first place.However, for me, the act of voting does not begin and end at the voting precinct or the voting booth. To effectively vote, one has to be informed with the options presented before him. One would have to get into discussions, to learn about each candidate’s platform, get involved.
And here, for me, lies the real importance of voting – getting involved and making sound decisions, knowing that one’s action can change the future.
References
- A Case for Patriotism: Secretary of State Pushes Youth Vote Campaign. (2001). Retrieved14 April 2008. http://www.secstate.wa.gov/office/osos_news. aspx?i=cCgsNUWIZpnnqJ1nPgffog>Currie, Ulysses. (2006). It is our duty to vote on Nov. 7.
- Gazette.Net. Retrieved 14 April 2008 <http://www.gazette.net/stories/110106/montope170528_31954.shtml>Dubner, Stephen J. and Levitt, Steven D. (2005).
- Why Vote? New York Times. Retrieved 14April 2008. <http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/magazine/06freak.html?_r=1&oref=slogin>Greis, Max. (2001).
- A Duty to Vote. New York Times Letter to the Editor. Retrieved14 April 2008. <http://query. nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B03E4DC1730F931A15755C0A9679C8B63>Voting is best way to show patriotism. Daily Lobo.
- Retrieved 14 April 2008.<http://media.www.dailylobo.com/media/storage/paper344/news/2001/10/02/Opinion/Editorial.
- Voting.Is.Best.Way.To.Show.Patriotism-109422. shtml>Web Pulse: Is Voting a Waste of Time? New York Times. Retrieved 14 April 2008 <http://www.nytimes.com/ezpoll/20051106mag-voting_results.html>
Notes For Powerpoint Presentation
MIT press published the revolutionary book The Limits of Growth, that reminded us of the urgent and fundamental need to manage our unparalleled growth and our often unreasonable demands. The Scarcity to Ecological Security presented us another point of view in different aspects of what are the damages happening to our society, to our world. Let’s take a look at some pointers what the author would like us to understand and analyze.
Chapter 5 topic is focused on food policy. With our population that has dramatically changed over the years, and it’s been increasing big time. A lot of problems have risen that are accompanied by over population. Some issues to look upon are poverty, malnutrition, and food scarcity. The imbalance between demand and supply that is becoming mainly evident in relation to food and water security. In this chapter, the author described the ecological and sociopolitical drivers that influence the condition of clean water and adequate food supplies. Their analysis argued against overly simplistic interpretations of the resource problems confronting many societies.
A large numbers of people remained underfed because of poverty; people failed to anticipate the current situation of shortages in the face of surpluses. On the other hand, there’s an increasing numbers of people in the wealthier countries who are overfed, who are suffering from different difficulties because of too much food consumption. It was also discussed that it is expected that the same economic inconsistency and trade barriers that have given rise to malnutrition in the past to persist into the future.
The big problem of poor countries is that they have not enough knowledge and help coming from their governments or outside institution in order for them to deal with food shortages. While on industrialized countries, it’s not easy to develop domestic farming. Why? Because agricultural production in industrial countries are still heavily funded and many barriers remain to agricultural imports from less developed countries. As a result, the poor and deeply indebted agrarian countries have limited capital with which to expand food production, little access to markets in the industrialized countries, and few sources of income with which to finance any essential food imports.
The goal of making globalization for the world’s poor is to open up agricultural markets and reducing subsidies to agriculture in industrial countries. This in return will have the greatest impact in fighting future starvation and malnutrition. The author described that hunger is not directly linked with overpopulation; rather the problem lies with the accessibility of food. It was pointed out that there’s an adequate food supply but people weren’t able to afford or have access to it because of poverty. Poor people often lack access to land and other resources, thus they can’t produce and provide food for themselves.
Limited access to essential resources is not only an environmental issue, but there’s also a political and socioeconomic that is associated to it; it involves trade barriers, farm subsidies, debt, and other problems that keep poor people impoverished and hungry even when there’s enough supply of food on a global basis.
Poor people who doesn’t have an access to food supply becomes malnourished, especially children, who are greatly affected by it. This issue is not only a primary concern of America, rather the whole world. It was discussed that food insecurity is not only seen to under developed countries but as well those higher income countries. Vast majority of food insecure people live in South Asia.
The chapter 5 also discussed what the Green Revolution is. It is a movement to increase yields by using, new crop cultivars, Irrigation, Fertilizers, Pesticides and Mechanization. It was founded to end hunger by improving crop performance, and to end serious food shortages. It changed the agriculture significantly, making it dependent both on environmentally destructive practices because of the use of pesticides, fertilizers, and irrigation and on fossil fuels. The future of human food supplies is now closely linked to the future of energy supplies.
It presented that the world population will likely continue to rise, but the population decline in many industrialized countries will create new socioeconomic and political problems. Although world food production is likely to increase at a rate that keeps up with population growth, greater demand in China as well as distributional issues will keep significant numbers of people malnourished. Aside from these continuing scarcity issues, ecological insecurity may increase because of new threats that include global warming, loss of biodiversity, bioinvasion, and the rapid worldwide spread of new diseases. As a whole, the book Scarcity to Ecological Security not only analyzes the nature of these impending problems but also suggests ways how to solve them.
CONCLUSION
The issue of food policy concerns the whole world, and little does the government or other institutions prioritize such problems. Few organizations, such as UNICEF or other non – government agencies make waves in order for them to aid countries who were underfed.
Underfed refers to malnutrition especially with kids and lack of agricultural education to those who have abundant access to land. They don’t have sufficient funds for them to utilize their resources to the fullest and export them to into industrialized countries. The authors made an effort to correlate his research with previous studies to present the past problems are still haunting us and will continue to hinder us from developing. Drastic changes should be observed and make an action now.