Keywords
God is a Poet, essay, creative writing
Document Type
Essay
Description
Why do we need literature? Certainly, there is much to admire in thoughtful, beautifully crafted narratives, poems, and plays, in gripping stories, layered characters, and poignant turns of phrase. But need is more intense than admiration, more desperate than mere affection. A graduate school friend and Church member once remarked to me, astutely, that if one surveys all the world’s civilizations over the course of known history, one can find plenty of examples of societies that had no concept of private property or insurance industries or professional sports teams or universities or lawyers or finance capitalists or plastic surgeons (and so on and so on). But there is no example, not one, of societies that had no art. Art, apparently, is a universal human need. And that includes verbal art: literature. In that respect, literature is like religion: no society exists without it.
Recommended Citation
Wickman, Matthew
(2024)
"God is a Poet,"
Inscape: Vol. 44:
No.
1, Article 22.
Available at:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/inscape/vol44/iss1/22