Pelé’s Poetry Podcast: Episode 3 – What is poetry’s purpose?

Pele Cox and her co-host Rich Uridge ask: what is the purpose of poetry? With the help of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Thomas Wyatt, they conclude that, in part, poetry’s job is to move readers to virtuous action or “well doing and not well knowing only” as Sidney put it.     

Along the way they notice similarities between 16th century Elizabethan London and 21st century Trump’s America where to speak one’s mind risks losing one’s head – figuratively if not literally these days. But despite the risks poets, they agree, need to be rebellious.

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