Our ADA Advisory Board: Why does poetry matter?

Here are their answers.

Poetry, important poetry, places us where we belong while so much lugs us into worlds that eat away at everything we cherish.
-Jack Ridl

I have always wanted to be a rockstar, mostly so that women could be assisted in finding me attractive.  As it is, there are just these few lines I can write some days and your fingers now strumming these next few words into electric sound.  I rise up each morning so that I might strike fire, shake the ground and sit back down to sigh a grateful thank you.  Even this was nice, don’t you think?  This poem right here.
-Randy Smit

Poetry was probably the writing form that I found most intimidating while growing up. It is only now, in my “dotage,” that I have begun to appreciate its power. In a sense, I view it as sculpting with words. I love the way that poetry – at least that which I can understand – cuts to the heart of the matter with beauty and economy.
-Jacqueline Guttman

Reading poetry connects me to a literary tradition dating back to troubadours singing ballads. Writing poetry helps me discover what I need to know.
-Joan Sidney

For a time when I was child I believed that if someone gently placed a dry hand flat on my forearm, then whatever I was feeling—peace or turmoil—would pass through from my skin into that person’s palm, a relayed touch of recognition. This innocent notion probably evolved from how my mother pressed her hand on my  forehead when I was ill and registered, with certainty, fever or well being.

Once after a fall, but showing no visible signs of injury, I pulled my older brother’s hand to my arm. “It hurts!” I cried. “Feel it! Feel how it hurts!” He wrinkled his face and frowned. “It doesn’t work that way.”

However, not long after that, I discovered poetry and found that yes, it does work that way. Poetry is the hand that when placed on the skin of another, knows.

-Karyn Lie-Nielsen