The Society Today: Poetry is not a Luxury

Poetry is not a Luxury
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Poetry is not a Luxury
The society today treats women as second class citizens who most adhere to the norms set to them by the men. While some women have come out to express themselves to show their feelings of the treatment they get from their men, others have not had the same courage. Poetry has emerged as a viable way for the women to come out of their shell and discover their inner-selves. Through poetry, they have made efforts to convey a message on how they feel about certain ideas. In “Poetry is not Luxury”, Audre Lorde focuses on the importance of poetry to women and stresses on the need of the women to find their hidden darker side.
Lorde argues that to women “poetry is not Luxury” (286). Lorde begins the article by noting that the “The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives” (285). She notes that women have a hidden resilience in their dark place which they must explore. They should never live by the norms that the society has set for them. To achieve this, they need poetry because it is vital to their existence (286). Can we therefore blame lack of poetry to be the reason why some women cannot shake off the tags that the society has bestowed upon them? It is quite irrational to blame poetry or lack of it to be the major reason why women choose to remain in subordination to men (Sharp, 2018). Sharp also seems to downplay the importance of poetry by arguing that she never things the people that read the poems are going to be influenced by them enough to change their minds. In this regards, she argues against Lorde’s stance that poetry is not a luxury. Poetry looks largely useless on its face value (Sharp, 2018). Sharp argues that that she does not believe in the transformative power of art. I understand that some women use poems to express their hopes and fears and retell their experiences. In this regard, it is important to understand that poetry can hold a lot of value to a lot of people. I believe that Lorte’s argument that women cannot come up with new ideas different from what the society knows (268) is downplaying the ability of the women to be creative. I believe that women can find new ways of making those ideas felt and to examine the exact meanings of those ideas even without poetry.
The question begging on my mind is: what role does poetry play in liberating women? The argument of the author is that poetry can act as the shining light on which women can use to form ideas that can help them to form magic (285). I have often appreciated that through poetry, vague ideas can be turned into reality. The author has echoed this belief by noting that poetry can be used to give names to ideas which without poetry, would have remained formless and nameless (289). From her argument, I believe the author wants to portray poetry as being able help people to explore and understand words. However, Sharp (2018) seems to downplay the transformative power of poetry. She argues that over the years, poetry “has been a powerful form of processing, as well as a stereotyped genre, for many a wave — and it is not changing things fast enough.” From this argument alone, it is safe to hold that poetry is doing nothing new to change societal norms. In fact, people have become used to them as the common outcries from women. So then, are we wasting time focusing on poetry as the liberating force for women?
One of the most crucial focus points in the paper is fear. Fear is one of the issues that normally hold women back. The author argues that poetry can encourage women to become fearless. This will help them to scrutinize their lives, the fears that rule their lives. They will rise and talk about these fears and their confidence levels will rise (287). With this, the author makes a strong statement on why poetry should never be considered a luxury. Sharp (2018) argues that because poetry is important, poets are considered important members of the society. However, I believe that some poems are written as luxuries, for the purpose of entertainment. Therefore, the statement cannot be universally accepted and the author should take time to consider the fact that some people do poetry as a luxury.
The author makes an important argument when she notes that women have a dar...