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Notes -
I'm not hugely into poetry, but my impression from the poetry I do like is that it's more like tuneless song, and that in the ancient world it was often chanted or intoned, and also used to aid memory. I really enjoy Byzantine and Arabic liturgical forms, for instance, traditionally chanted in 8 tones on a rotating schedule. There's an akathist tea I hope to be able to rejoin sometime, where women get together, publicly read an akathist in a circle, and then all have lovely aesthetic tea cakes with pretty cups and loose flowers steeping in glass teapots. Among somewhat modern poets, my favorite is TS Eliot, mostly because the words just sound so good, but even he has to be read aloud. Fundamentally, I think that poetry is more or less liturgical, rather than trying to express views in compressed formats -- it's meant for public ceremonies, and even things like preforming Shakespeare are more that than they are just hearing a story. My favorite Shakespeare class consisted almost entirely of just reading plays about King Henry around the room and then sitting there and letting the sound of the words sink in.
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