These notes deal with a very simple topic: why has poetry become so marginal in our culture? Of course, I do not have an equally simple answer: here I will only bring up a few questions that seem pertinent to anyone trying to get to it. I think that this situation of poetry has to do decisively with the nature of what poetry does, and that, as things stand, what it does goes against very powerful forces, present both in our society and in our mental habits. (assuming that it is possible to distinguish one from the other). Consequently, I am going to insist, on the one hand, on some aspects of what poetry, and specifically lyric poetry, seems to necessarily imply and, on the other, on certain features of ourselves and our social environment that foster a vision, let us say , singularly antilyrical of human beings.
