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Poetry Is for You

Poetry is humanity's essential inheritance—a discipline that awakens us to full awareness and connects us across time. Beyond aesthetic pleasure, poems serve as witnesses to history, preserve meaning through crisis, and transform our relationship with language itself. Through memorization and embodied engagement, poetry provides shared vocabulary for naming experience, reminds us of our fellowship with others living and dead, and rescues us from "Life in Death"—the state of having a heartbeat without being fully alive. Rather than decorative, poetry is fundamental: it teaches us that beauty and truth cannot be separated, that metaphor is our primary way of knowing, and that language is material rather than merely functional. By living with poems, we gain precise tools for recognizing and naming the particular moments that comprise our days.

Christine Perrin photo By Christine Perrin

February 16, 2026

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Poetry Is for You

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Christine Perrin

Podcast Host and Contributing Writer

Christine Perrin is a literature professor, writer, poet, and podcast host. After teaching literature full-time at Messiah University for almost 20 years, Christine arranges her time to write, teach in Italy, and host the Composed Podcast. Christine is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University (BA in Writing Seminars) and the University of Maryland (MFA in Poetry).

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