Why does poetry matter?

Matthew Zapruder argues that readers should start with what a poem’s words literally say instead of hunting for hidden meanings, working through poems old and new to show how much that plain attention reveals.

John Carey tells poetry’s history in short chapters, from the Epic of Gilgamesh to poets writing today, with the stories behind the poems and the lives of the people who wrote them.

Ben Lerner starts from the fact that many people dislike poetry, and many poets distrust it too, and argues that the gap between poetry’s ambitions and actual poems keeps the art alive. It is a short essay.

James Longenbach argues that poetry’s pleasures come from its resistance to easy meaning, looking closely at line, syntax, figurative language and voice in poems old and new.

Seamus Heaney’s lectures as Oxford Professor of Poetry argue that poems can balance and answer the pressures of history, with essays on poets from Christopher Marlowe and John Clare to Elizabeth Bishop.