By ARTHUR A. COHEN
--- New York Times

              Poetry is an immodest art.
              The poet may be modest,
  imagining that
the times pass him by,
    ignoring his pain,
      regarding his delicate
                      intermediation of
time
and
          eternity
as irrelevant to
the large enterprise of
social architecture and historical reconstruction,
but the poet
knows a secret which
only
          egregious self-destructiveness obscures,
that the great poem
sings a succinct universe,
compasses the whole
                              myth of man's life and death.
Culture may despise poets
                                  but it cannot endure without poetry
(and as well,
          paintings,
sculpture,
novels,
music,
although it can
          despise,
punish and murder
their creators).