David Orr’s article In Defense of Poetry, a review of Rhyme’s Rooms: The Architecture of Poetry by Brad Leithauser was printed in the March 17, 2022 issue of The New York Times.
If you write about poetry, you will at some point consider putting together a book introducing the art to general readers. “Poetry is so wonderful and yet so unpopular,” you will say to yourself. “If only more people understood how worthwhile it really is.” So you will collect your thoughts, make a couple of outlines, and then do your best to nudge our country’s most recalcitrant cultural practice just slightly closer to the audiences whose attention might — what? Help it? Help them? Surely both, you will think, even if only a little.
