A poet struggles for words during a marriage proposal, leading to the question: Is poetry really better at capturing our feelings than plain old prose? Tell us in the comments
What makes us reach for poetry? I have often heard the claim that it is extreme events — a birth or death or love, for example — that sends people in search of verse to calm or enlighten or explain the particulars lost in the tumult of such emotion. It’s a strange claim to me because to be born, to die and to love are in no way extremes; they are perhaps the only three natural certainties available to human animals. When my father died last year at 53 years of age, I did not turn to poetry, I turned to family and I turned inward. When I decided to propose to my partner Hannah recently, I offered only three words, followed by the question.
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