This may be the most convincing reason to persuade people to read poetry so far, and it is also the best defense of poetry, which is better than the philosopher's teaching that "poetry is always a broad teacher of life", although such advice is a bit utilitarian in advertising.
After listening to such biased suggestions, some people may want to complain about novels, essays and other styles. However, poetry has always been recognized as the highest form of language art and literature, which some prose novelists cannot deny. For example, Mao Mu, as a novelist, admitted that the poet's art is more noble than the novelist's, that is, poetry is higher than novels.
Poetry is always associated with inspiration, imagination, mysterious and unspeakable realm, and even truth. Poetry is the mother of all arts and the source of all knowledge. It is called art in art, and poets always tend to occupy the reputation of genius. So if you really want to cultivate elegant literary taste, you might as well seriously consider the poet's persuasion.
Prose is most likely to be the unfortunate reference of poetry and the object of contempt of poets, although poets often like to write prose as a capable thing. Therefore, some poets will write prose with their left hand to please the public, and write poems with their right hand to please themselves. Some poets will call themselves "left-handed muses" when writing prose. Readers who like to read prose certainly don't need to be depressed-that doesn't necessarily prove that you don't have good literary taste. Brodsky tells readers that if you can continue to read prose after reading poetry, it shows that the prose writer's language has independent strength and elegance, and it also means that reading has become an irresistible hobby for you. Conceit can make a poet dishonest. A poet's excellent prose, like his excellent poetry, is also written by a "right-handed muse".
The novel is not immune from the poet's criticism and criticism, and the loose narrative structure of the novel is unbearable for the poet. Broschi said bluntly that the more poems a reader reads, the harder it is to tolerate verbosity. Mao Mu quoted Coleridge, an English poet, as saying that Don Quixote is a book that only needs to be browsed once, perhaps because its content is too complicated to be read carefully. Mao Mu admits that few novels can be read from beginning to end with interest.
These words can inspire readers who don't like or have the patience to read novels. If there are any world famous works that can't make you interested in reading, you don't have to blame yourself for lacking literary cells, which may just prove that you have a good interest in literature.
Reading more poems helps us to cultivate good literary taste, which means that our literary taste will become more and more critical, and we will become more and more difficult to understand, or more and more deceptive. The more picky the readers' tastes are, the more difficult it is for those plagiarized beautiful articles, chicken essence blended with chicken soup, and "deep and good articles suitable for friends to forward" to flood the cultural space of the network, and the more difficult it is for "saliva poems", "divided poems" typed with keys, "arranged poems" combined with mathematical arrangements, and all kinds of fake and shoddy poems to blend into the rivers and lakes of words.
However, even if the poet's persuasion is convincing, there are only a few readers who are willing to join the ranks of reading poems to cultivate good literary taste. Therefore, the poet might as well be more conceited and "utilitarian" and simply let his persuasion of reading poems cross the border from the literary field to a broader field: reading poems is a way to cultivate good spiritual taste.
Reading poetry is a way to build a life compass on the ocean of life, and it is also a way to lead a poetic life on the wasteland of fate.
As long as the compass of life is constructed, it is a poetic heart, which creates the meaning of life, makes life poetic and makes life "live poetically". Poetic heart is the highest spiritual taste, and poetic life is the highest realm of life.
Poetic hearts make us have an aesthetic distance from the world and life, make life beautiful, make ordinary bloom beautiful, make plain breed magic, make us extraordinary in fireworks, let us walk into the noisy life outside the window and chase the figure of love through the streets.
Poetic heart allows us to gain a direct power to the other side, let us realize the meaning of life, let us intuitively feel the light of truth, and let us glimpse the secrets of that mysterious paradise; Poetic heart, let the moment be beautiful and eternal, let the spirit break free from the bondage of material desires and fly to freedom and infinity. Let's listen to the piano of the Muse in the noise of the street and the nightingale in the high-rise forest.
Poetic mind gives us the power to reject vulgarity and ugliness. With a poetic mind, we will be aboveboard, different from the secular, and have an elegant "spiritual outlook"; Poetic heart gives us moral binding force, makes us disdain political manipulation, makes us cherish reputation as feathers, makes us look up at the starry sky and overlook the inner moral law.
Poetic mind is a weapon against fate. With a poetic mind, even in the shackles of fate, life will dance on the stage of life. Even if I am misled by fate and deceived by life, even if I lose everything I once had, I still have a poetic heart to pick the moon and make a poem; Even if the stormy waves of fate break the ship's rail and throw it to the shore, there is still a poetic heart to sit and watch Yun Qi and feel the tide; Even if you are tightly bound by the rope of fate and trapped in a besieged city, you still have a poetic heart; Even if I am banished by fate, I have a heart as poetic as my hometown.
Reading poetry is a way to cultivate good literary taste and good spiritual taste. I can't help wondering whether reading poetry is also a necessary condition for cultivating good scientific taste. I am willing to use "scientific taste" to express the feelings and abilities that scientific people need to cultivate besides logical deduction and reasoning ability, such as inspiration and creativity, association ability and aesthetic ability.
If the form of truth is beautiful, then scientists who are responsible for exploring the ultimate mystery of the universe need to have a "poetic heart" to feel the beauty of truth, and need to have intuition and perception ability to reach the other side.
If, as Stephen Hawking declared, "philosophy is dead" and only science can undertake the sacred mission of exploring the mysteries of the universe, then the stage of science still needs poetic dance, and the imagination of science needs poetic nourishment to prevent the scientific theoretical hypothesis from becoming a cold deduction of pure mathematical logic. The scientific hypothesis without poetic observation is just a weed that spreads ideas and cannot bear flowers of ideas.
For example, the parallel universe hypothesis, which is very popular with science fiction writers, is like a replica of the virtual world in online games. In this pluralistic world, there is no place for human will. Our world seems to be dominated by cold laws of mathematics and physics, regardless of human will, but our world is a world dominated by human will. It is man's will that makes the world we live in bloom with civilization, makes this absurd world meaningful in the eyes of existentialists, and creates a spiritual world and an aesthetic world based on man's will.
In the parallel universe hypothesis, various logical versions of the world we live in exist absurdly at the same time, and life and destiny are mathematically combined and deduced in countless parallel worlds. A wish that cannot be realized in this world has become a reality in another parallel world. The shortcomings of this world must be perfected in another parallel world, which sounds more like spiritual comfort or medicine for religious belief. Similarly, the beauty of this world will be brutally destroyed in another world, and the angels of this world will fall in another world. In that case, religion will no longer enjoy the copyright of hell alone, but there are many hellish worlds in the parallel universe that no religion can imagine creating.
A world without human will, there is no room for poetry and imagination to fly. What an absurd existence such a world will be, and existentialists will hate it.
Shelley declared in a high-profile way that poets are unacknowledged world legislators. Poetry establishes the highest standard of all the laws of the world, which enables us to create life according to the laws of beauty, create a poetic world, and make the laws of poetry the laws that dominate the world.