A Place for Poetry

Poetry has a place in contemporary life -- it reminds us of what it means to be human. Take this poem pulled virtually at random from my Norton Anthology of Poetry:

"The Dead Butterfly"

1
Now I see its whiteness
is not white but green, traced with green,
and resembles the stones
of which the city is built,
quarried high in the mountains.

2
Everywhere among the marigolds
the rainblown roses and the hedges
of tamarisk are white
butterflies this morning, in constant
tremulous movement, only those
that lie dead revealing
their rockgreen color and the bold
cut of the wings.

All right, so it wasn't quite so random -- I love Denise Levertov, the poet behind this little verse. The poem is about life and death, stillness and movement. The "Now" of the first line puts the poem in a space of time in which the speaker perceives one difference between life and death. The repetition of the word "green" in the second line denotes the sharpening of that sensation, a "tremulous movement" of the speaker's own in which she attempts almost to bring the butterfly back to life through her own perception. The ability to perceive and create such things is quintessentially human. I know this is starting to sound like an essay, so I'll stop, but I like poetry.