poetry is useless, poetry cannot be consumed

Poetry, many argue (e.g. Montale, Pasolini), stands in an oppositional relationship with what is useful (and therefore what is consumable).

This oppositional relationship is not a negation. Pasolini for example does not argue that poetry cannot be consumed: it is. But this consumption does not exhaust what one might call the “power of poetry” its potentiality, its capacity to persevere. In other words, one could say that even if poetry assumes the form of the commodity, and circulates as such, its use value is not effaced.

Likewise, claiming that poetry is useless, does not mean to celebrate or denigrate its (social, political, economic, even existential) irrelevance, but rather to argue that its relationship with utility is one of implication, in that it is by being irrelevant that poetry is indeed relevant.

This corresponds to suggesting that there is something in language that cannot be consumed, that cannot be made useful. It pushes one to ask, is this useless inconsumable element something that is within language or is it something that is not in language in itself? But this question appears ill conceived because it wants to operate a distinction in what is indistinguishable.

Rather, considering what is useless or inconsumable in poetry as something that cannot be separated from its utility/consumption (exchange value), can suggest:

• poetry is a necessity

• the necessity of poetry is in a certain relationship with history. It is it’s non-historical dimension.

• those that identify poetry with human existence, and thus separate it out from the “world” as a creative capacity that would stand against capitalism, politics and other forms of control, by making poetry into an object of contemplation end up reproducing the distinction that empowers these forms of control.