Excerpt from The Q&A: Jonathan Galassi (Via The Economist)

Poets have said, with great justice, that the only reason to write a poem is that you can’t not write it. And many have also said that it is the non-commercial aspect of poetry that gives it its special integrity. It’s also probably one reason why there is so much jealousy among poets. As Henry Kissinger put it, the reason there’s so much squabbling in academia is that there is so little at stake. But I do think that poetry is only about itself, only about experiencing the world and making something out of that “lover’s quarrel” that is very personal—and paradoxically also universal. And there is the guild of poets who understand each other—they may not like the way the others do it, but they all have the same “angle of attention” to the universe. So there’s a sense of solidarity among them. And they probably love the fact that the world doesn’t pay them enough attention, that what they do is their secret in a way. They must choose that in some way.

Is it impossible to think that poetry will ever be mainstream?

The “situation” of poetry is one of those perennial issues that will never really be resolved. Poetry is not mainstream, but then neither is serious fiction, really. But I don’t think there’s a lot to worry about in this particular “problem”. Why does art have to be mainstream to be significant? One of the ways you can judge the enduring relevance of poetry is how often it’s quoted to make sense of a particular time. Look at Wilfred Owen and the way we think about the first world war, or how Eliot or Auden are quoted to sum up their age. This betrays the deep importance of poetry, and the way it gets absorbed into the marrow of the culture.

But you obviously think that poetry has a necessary place in society, even if it is not commercial?

Poetry has a vital place in society, whether it’s granted one or not. It exists; it is something people perversely do. Whether it gets formal acknowledgment or is provided an established role is really not the ultimate point. There’s a lot of energy and money spent on trying to make a place for poetry in society; I’m all for it, and I work on this myself in various ways. But I don’t think it has anything to do with the art. Poetry is anti-establishment by nature—except when it’s not, of course, and then it tends to be of little interest. True poetry gets absorbed ex post facto, when people understand that the poet is seeing something, knows something, that they didn’t. And that is the poet’s ultimate reward: to change perception, to enter the language, to matter. There’s nothing more mainstream than that. And it’s something you can’t buy, can’t force. It just happens.