Last March 21 marked World Poetry Day—a celebration that once again stirred the quiet but persistent pulse of poetry across digital spaces. In observance of the occasion, poets took to their Facebook walls to share their creative expressions, transforming timelines into brief sanctuaries of verse. Some went further, inviting friends and fellow writers to post their own works, selecting a few to receive copies of their books—a gesture that affirms poetry not only as art, but as a shared and living practice.
World Poetry Day was first declared by UNESCO during its 30th General Conference in Paris in 1999. The initiative sought to support linguistic diversity through poetic expression and to create spaces where endangered languages might be heard. Since then, the day has become an occasion to honor poets, revive the oral tradition of poetry recitation, and promote the reading, writing, and teaching of poetry. It also encourages a meaningful convergence between poetry and other art forms—such as theatre, dance, music, and painting—while helping to sustain poetry’s presence in public and media life.
Yet beyond these global celebrations and declarations, poetry continues to live in quieter, more intimate spaces—in the solitary act of reading, in casual conversations, and even in the small, unremarkable corners of everyday life.
I was in a local coffee shop one afternoon, waiting for my usual order—a cup of brewed coffee and a slice of chocolate cake. To pass the time, I leafed through a back issue of Poetry magazine, that small but formidable literary journal founded in 1912 by Harriet Monroe.
It was the April 2014 issue (Volume CCIV, Number I), featuring works by Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Ishion Hutchinson, Sheryl Luna, and others. I was reading Dorothea Lasky’s Lilac Field, which appeared on page 20, when a journalist-friend suddenly appeared behind me and remarked, “Malingaw diay kag basa ana?” Then he added with a grin, “Di jud ko ganahan anang poem.”
I smiled and answered in the affirmative. Yes, I do enjoy reading poems. And yes, I also enjoy writing them.
It has often been said that poetry is the highest form of literature. Perhaps that is why only a few dare to write it. Poetry attempts to compress universal human experience into a handful of lines. Sometimes a reader cannot grasp its meaning in a single reading. That is not necessarily because poetry is obscure; rather, it is dense. It condenses life.
And condensing life into a few lines is not as easy as finishing a slice of chocolate cake. It demands discipline. The poet must labor over language so that every word carries weight. There must be no excess, no unnecessary ornament. The poet must master the economy of words.
The late Dr. Leoncio Deriada of UP Visayas, a Palanca Hall of Famer and author of the book Little Workshops, Little Critiques, once remarked that a good poem is like a ballerina—slim, and therefore not verbose. That image has stayed with me. A ballerina does not waste movement; a poem must not waste words.
Yet long before poetry was praised as the highest literary form, it had its critics.
In 1579, Stephen Gosson attacked poetry in his The Schoole of Abuse, questioning its moral reliability and even casting invectives against poets themselves. But he was answered by Philip Sidney in his Apologie for Poetrie (1581), a spirited defense of the art.
Centuries later, Thomas Love Peacock revived the criticism. In his essay The Four Ages of Poetry (1820), he divided poetic history into four ages: iron, gold, silver, and brass. According to Peacock, poetry begins in the iron age, matures into nobility in the gold age, becomes artificial in the silver age, and finally declines in the brass age. He believed his own era to be the brass age of poetry.
Peacock went further by arguing that poets were essentially useless, that society should give honor to those who produce tangible utility. To him, poetry was the most worthless of intellectual exercises. Poets, in his view, were idle scribblers.
That criticism prompted Percy Bysshe Shelley to write A Defence of Poetry in 1821 (published posthumously in 1840). Shelley responded not merely with argument but with vision.
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He defined poetry as the expression of imagination. We may broadly call anyone who expresses imagination a poet—be they sculptors, musicians, artists, or even founders of religions. Yet, Shelley insisted that language, shaped itself by imagination, remains the highest form of poetry. Shelley also argued for poetry’s moral power. It enlarges the imagination, and imagination nurtures sympathy. Where imagination is absent, cruelty thrives. Poetry refines moral perception not by preaching, but by awakening feeling.
He even addressed accusations of obscenity. It is not poetry that corrupts humanity, he said, but humanity that corrupts poetry. Poetry, in every age however troubled, remains “the light of life.”
And then Shelley soared.
Poets, he wrote, are “the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” They are inspired individuals who capture, in language, glimpses of an ideal realm. Poetry redeems from decay the visitations of divinity in man. It exalts beauty, reconciles opposites—grief and pleasure, horror and exaltation—and binds together the vast empire of human society across time and space.
One writer observed that poetry purifies the inner self. A great poem is like a fountain forever overflowing with wisdom and delight.
No doubt Shelley succeeded in conveying the immense significance of poetry—even to those who remain skeptical.
And so I return to that coffee shop moment, to my friend who confessed he did not like the poem I was reading. That is perfectly fine. Poetry is not instant coffee that dissolves easily in hot water. It takes time. Sometimes it takes a second reading. Sometimes it takes patience—and occasionally, a stronger brew.
Are poets gifted beings?
Perhaps not in the sense of possessing supernatural powers. They do not levitate while composing sonnets. They do not glow in the dark when inspiration strikes. But they are gifted in this: they cannot let experience pass without trying to shape it into language. They listen more closely, observe more carefully, and compress what others might leave scattered.
If that makes them gifted, then perhaps they are.
And if you will indulge me for a moment, I will admit—without too much drama—that I, too, write poems. Not because I claim divine inspiration, but because I cannot help it. Some people collect stamps. Some collect shoes. I collect lines.
So if ever you see me in a coffee shop, quietly reading a slim literary magazine while my cake grows smaller and my coffee grows colder, do not worry. I am not lost.
I am simply trying to legislate the world—one small poem at a time.
Email me at rgmoldez@gmail.com
