George Orwell - “Literature, especially poetry, and...”

“Literature, especially poetry, and lyric poetry most of all, is a kind of family joke, with little or no value outside its own language-group.”

George Orwell The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius

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“For all but the sliver of poetry fans, over the past forty years popular song lyrics have been the nation’s poetry.”

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“A tough life needs a tough language—and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is.”

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“. . . poetry, like all imaginative creations, divines the human enterprise. This is poetry's social value.”

Major Jackson