Skip to main content

Can Poetry Help Resolve Social Issues?

Today in our present-day society, there is no doubt that many social issues are unsettled. While many of these social issues will remain unresolved for a long time, given that everyone has the right to their own, individual opinion,  poetry could possibly help.  I feel as if when we discuss and inspect these social issues we are only viewing the simple, head-on interpretation of what they mean, how they affect society, and so on. However through the use of poetry, authors are able to capture and portray a complexity of the issue that was not being seen before. Poetry invokes empathy, compassion, connections, and just overall helps us to realize the pieces that we missed. With this in mind, I believe that it becomes more clear that maybe many of these social issues do lack these components that could prove to be beneficial. When our society talks about and wishes to resolve such social issues, we want one answer because it seems to be our human nature to wish for simplicity over complexity. However, I personally don't think simplicity can be the answer in situations such as these. With so many voices needed to be heard in such controversial issues, complexity is inevitable. Obviously I am not trying to say that poetry is the magical solution to all our world's social issues. However, maybe it could help us discover more clarity as poetry allows us to connect with one another and open our eyes to a new perspective.

Kanye Shrug GIFs - Get the best GIF on GIPHY

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What's So Great About Poetry?

Poetry- the unit that most students dread to learn about in their English class. But why is poetry so disliked among high school students? A few of these reasons, and that I can attest for personally, are that poetry is seen as old, it can be quite difficult to understand/interpret, and we just fail to see the point of it. However, after interpreting some poems in class, my perspective began to shift (only slightly not significantly though). While I am still not the biggest fan of poetry, I am beginning to see a different side to it.  Yes, poetry is all of the negative things that I stated above (at least in my opinion) but once poetry is understood, the lesson becomes that much clearer and applicable. Understanding and correctly interpreting poetry is not only a beneficial skill to have but it also opens your eyes to a deeper understanding to things that are important in terms of culture, history, and etc. For example, poetry has effectively been used to advocate and teach about i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Everlasting Mistakes: America Never Seems to Learn

America is essentially naive. We take what we want and we take what we have for granted. If something is going to propel our status up, whether it's for wealth, our social lives, or just out of selfishness, we don't seem to even hesitate to act. As we observe in Raymo's piece, the act of selfishness and naiveté is what drives their decisions, and eventually, will lead to their own death. The piece takes place in 1987, which is only around 25 years from when we learned how harmful cigarettes actually were. Just like in Raymo's piece when the six-year-old girl "rubbed the glowing dust on her body" not knowing that the "beautiful dust" would "damage her living cells" (Raymo 212) and kill her, our society did something quite similar and acted out of same naiveté. We did the same thing with tobacco and cigarettes and blindly rushed into using them because "they were cool" and "the new thing". Then once it was already too late...
2 comments
Read more

"How Are You?" (I don't actually care though)

When we talk to people, we always seem to start our conversations with phrases such as, "how are you?" or "what's been going on with you lately?". But what is the purpose to asking these questions if the responses that we get back essentially don't mean anything to us? What are we getting from one-word answers like "good", "I'm fine", or just "yeah"? By nature, we ask these questions without actually caring about what the person answers back to us. However, I actually believe that these questions are of crucial use to us. For example, when your parents force you to meet someone like their "high school friend" and all you have to do is be polite, these questions are quite handy. You're able to fill awkward time and be polite at the same time. While it might seem cold-hearted to think this way, in reality, everyone does it. On the other hand, I'm sure there are some people who are asking these questions to ...
2 comments
Read more