At our Oxbridge 2008 conference, Dana Gioia, award winning poet and former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, gave an address titled “Art and the Search for Meaning.”  In it, he discussed the role of art in life, in education, and in Christianity, and argued that we have an innate need for beauty – if we don’t expose ourselves and our children to great art, then we will fill that need for beauty with lesser, and sometimes baser, art.

As a resource for thought and discussion, here is a link to “Can Poetry Matter,” an essay Gioia wrote about the state of poetry in the 21st century, and whether poetry still matters.

In addition, for a similar view of the state of affairs of poetry in the United States, particularly how quality criticism of poetry matters, please read this article by Jeffrey H. Gray in the Chronicle of Higher Education, titled “Poet’s Puffery.”