Poetry Is Good For Business

In Monday's Wall Street Journal, Baton Rouge Advocate columnist Danny Heitman makes the case for poetry in today's business world. He writes,

Although the brevity of Twitter and fleeting attention spans have been widely bemoaned by business professionals who are trying to get their points across, poets throughout the ages have routinely confronted the challenge of saying a lot—and saying it memorably—in small spaces. Read John Keats, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson and Wallace Stevens, and learn how it's done.

I remember learning the biography of Stevens as a working undergraduate and taking heart that someone could be both a poet and a professional. That the two sides could not only coexist but complement. But poetry isn't only good for teaching people to write briefly and with purpose. People need the imagery and abstraction of poetry as well. They need new ways of seeing things, of understanding the impression the world makes on them, despite all of the noise of the day's activities. A little poetry is good for everyone.