The The talent that poets have is that they just remember in some deep

out ofistic part of themselves,

like the meanings of those words and their providences

and their connections, and they have this instinctive.

I mean, I have an almost mystical belief in this.

Language is our collective knowledge. We're not aware of those things

consciously for the most part, but we know that. We know it. Yeah.

somewhere. So, and poets are just people who know it to have a deeper sense of those things, I think.

And it's just cracks me up when I was, you know, people say like, you know, they think that what makes somebody poet is that they're more sensitive than other people.

Emotional, it's like now, I mean most of the poets are monsters.

You know, they're completely like, they're completely jerks and they're not more emotional or sensitive or or

whatever than other people I mean and it's it's that they it's this it has to do with

their relationship to language. That's Matthew Zeproeder discussing the special relationship that poets have to language.

We'll talk to the poet and professor about his new book, Why Poetry, today on the History of Literature. Okay, here we go. Welcome to the program. I'm Jack Wilson. We have an incredible show today.

Matthew Zeprouter is here. Matthew's a professor. He was the editor of the New York Times magazine's poetry page, he's written four books of poetry himself,

and he has some ideas, ideas that mean something, especially for those of us who love literature and who love poetry, and who are maybe

a little bit confused. Confused at why poetry has the particular reputation it does, at least here in America, at least in the wider culture.

I don't think we really get poetry.

We as a culture, we as individuals, we're not absorbing it in the way we could be.

Matthew has identified three reasons for why that might be many has some solutions for what will help us out.

Let's bring poetry back people.

Let's revive it. Let's reanimate it. Let's stand breast to breast with the

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