There is little premium in poetry in a world that thinks of

Hear the lament of Anna Quindlen, who declared: “There is little premium in poetry in a world that thinks of Pound and Whitman as a weight and a sampler, not an Ezra, a Walt, a thing of beauty, a joy forever.” In these words is a cry against forgetfulness, against the diminishment of art in an age that confuses names with commodities and reduces genius to trivia. Quindlen reminds us that when we strip away reverence, when we treat the great voices of the past as mere curiosities or clever labels, the fire of poetry itself begins to dim in the human soul.

The meaning is sharp: our age, rushing ever forward, risks treating poets not as living presences but as objects, like stones placed on a scale or samples passed around without context. To think of Ezra Pound as only a “pound of weight,” or Walt Whitman as merely a “sampler quilt,” is to strip them of their power. It is to forget that these were men of vision, who labored with words to capture the spirit of their times and the universality of human longing. The tragedy is not ignorance alone, but the casual dismissal of what should be sacred.

For Whitman himself was no sampler of scraps, but the vast singer of democracy, whose Leaves of Grass proclaimed the dignity of every soul. He was the voice of the common man, the prophet of America’s boundless experiment. And Pound, though flawed in politics, was a master craftsman who shaped modern poetry, teaching us to “make it new.” To reduce their names to mere wordplay is to blind ourselves to their legacy, to forget the rivers of beauty they poured into the world.

History teaches us that this danger is not new. Socrates himself warned that men would one day know names without wisdom, facts without meaning. And so it has come: children recite names for examinations, adults remember fragments for parlor games, but few linger with the soul of the poem, few taste the depth of verse. The premium on poetry is lost when art is stripped of reverence and reduced to trivia, when it is measured not by the heart but by utility.

Yet Quindlen’s lament is also a call to awaken. It is not enough to know that Ezra Pound existed, or that Whitman wrote poems; we must read them, breathe them, wrestle with them, let them shape us. For poetry is not a sample to be tested and discarded—it is nourishment. It is, as Keats once said, “a joy forever,” a thing that transforms sorrow into meaning and fleeting life into timeless song.

The lesson, therefore, is this: reclaim reverence for poetry. Do not treat it as a curiosity, but as a companion. Do not reduce the poet to a pun, but listen for the human voice within the lines. When the world races to strip beauty of its mystery, resist by sitting with a poem, by letting its rhythm slow your heart, by letting its vision expand your sight. In this way, you restore the premium—the pricelessness—of poetry in your own life.

Practical actions flow naturally. Read a few lines of great poetry each day—not for analysis, not for utility, but for the nourishment of the spirit. Speak aloud the verses of Whitman, Pound, Dickinson, or Hughes, and let their cadence fill your lungs. Teach others, especially the young, not only the names of poets but their living voices. And when you hear poetry dismissed as trivial, remember Quindlen’s words and defend its sacredness, for to preserve poetry is to preserve the soul of humanity.

Thus her words endure: “There is little premium in poetry in a world that thinks of Pound and Whitman as a weight and a sampler, not an Ezra, a Walt, a thing of beauty, a joy forever.” May we rise against such diminishment. May we honor the poets not as trivia, but as prophets. And may we carry their verses not in the shallow memory of wordplay, but in the deep chambers of our hearts, where they will live forever as guides, companions, and sources of light.