Poets are like the Postal Service – a group of people sedulously doing something that we no longer need, under the misapprehension that they are offering us a vital service. It’s not that letter-writing is dead. We write more letters than ever, now that no pen and ink and careful sealing are required. But we no longer send them through the mail. World War I brought a desperate rush to express the wounds of a nation in poetry and led to new frontiers of verse. What now is so urgent that it can be said only in poetry? What frontiers remain?

Alexandra Petri @ Washington Post