Stadium rock and commercial rock are the opposite of what poetry

Hear the words of Adrian Mitchell, who spoke with the fire of a poet and the tenderness of a teacher: “Stadium rock and commercial rock are the opposite of what poetry needs. An audience of around 200 is ideal for poetry.” These words strike against the fever of spectacle, against the hunger for vast crowds and roaring applause. For Mitchell knew that poetry is not a storm to be hurled over thousands, but a flame to be shared in closeness. A poet’s voice, like a whisper of the soul, can be drowned in the roar of stadiums, but in the stillness of a small gathering, it is heard, felt, and carried within.

The ancients understood this intimacy. The rhapsode of Greece did not sing Homer to thousands lost in noise, but to gathered listeners in courts and marketplaces. The psalmist sang to the temple, not to the coliseum. The bard of Ireland recited sagas in the hall, where the firelight flickered on the faces of his clan. For poetry is a personal encounter—one voice breathing into the ears of others. When Mitchell rejected the grandeur of stadium rock, he was not despising music, but reminding us that the poet’s task is different. The poet’s power is not in the thunder of amplification, but in the resonance of human presence.

History proves this truth. When Allen Ginsberg read Howl in 1955 at the Six Gallery in San Francisco, there were not thousands, but only a few hundred gathered. Yet those who were there felt the world shift beneath their feet. The smallness of the crowd was not weakness, but strength: each heart was struck, each voice was moved, and the echo spread outward. In time, that intimate reading helped ignite a generation’s counterculture. Had it been shouted to tens of thousands in a stadium, it might have been noise; but spoken to two hundred, it became fire.

Mitchell’s words also carry warning. For in a culture obsessed with numbers—followers, ticket sales, mass appeal—we are tempted to believe that greatness lies only in size. Yet poetry is proof of the opposite. A single stanza, spoken to a single soul, can change a life more deeply than the loudest concert echoing across a stadium. The grandeur of commercial rock is in its spectacle, but the grandeur of poetry is in its intimacy. Its measure is not applause, but transformation.

And yet Mitchell does not call for isolation. He does not say the poet should whisper only to one, but that two hundred is ideal. Why? Because that number still allows a community to form—large enough to feel the warmth of fellowship, small enough to preserve intimacy. Within such a gathering, every person feels seen, every voice is part of the silence that makes the poet’s words resound. In this way, the power of poetry is preserved, neither diminished by solitude nor drowned by spectacle.

The lesson is plain: seek depth, not scale. If you are a poet, do not measure your worth by the size of your audience, but by the depth of their listening. If you are a listener, do not despise the small reading, the local circle, the humble gathering, for there the poet’s voice is clearest. The seed of change is not sown in stadiums, but in hearts that hear closely and carry the words outward.

Practical steps are before us. Support poetry readings in small halls, libraries, and classrooms. Choose to attend intimate gatherings where voices are not lost in noise. When you share poetry, seek the closeness of conversation, not the distance of spectacle. And above all, remember that truth, beauty, and transformation travel best by hand, by breath, by presence, not by numbers alone.

Thus Mitchell speaks as prophet of intimacy: stadium rock belongs to thunder and celebration, but poetry belongs to flame and closeness. Let us then honor his wisdom, and build spaces where poets and people meet not as a faceless crowd, but as a fellowship of hearts. For in such gatherings, small but mighty, poetry becomes what it was always meant to be—the voice of humanity spoken and heard in the circle of the living.