Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them!
The pleasure of eloquence is in greatest part owing often to the stimulus of the occasion which produces it- - to the magic of sympathy, which exalts the feeling of each by radiating on him the feeling of all.
Poetry has always mattered, through human history, through all kinds of cultures, all kinds of violence and human desolation, as well as periods of great human affirmation. It's been associated with the power of the word, with the sacred, with magic and transformation, with the oral narratives that help a people cohere.
Back when I was a professional model-maker at Industrial Light & Magic, my specialty was hard-edged construction - spaceships, miniature sets, and architectural stuff. These objects were sometimes just 12 inches across yet needed enough detail to fill a movie screen.