"The young people have MTV and rock and roll. Why would they go to read poetry? Poetry belongs to the Stone Age. It awakens in us perceptions that go back to those times"
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MTV and rock and roll aren’t just props here; they’re a dare. Morgan sets up a neat, almost taunting contrast between high-speed, mass-produced sensation and the slow, private labor of reading. The first two sentences sound like a shrug from someone conceding the obvious: if culture is a vending machine of noise and images, why choose the quietest item on the shelf? Then he pivots, and the contempt flips direction. Calling poetry “Stone Age” isn’t a dismissal so much as a rebranding: poetry isn’t obsolete, it’s elemental. It predates the marketplace.
The subtext is that modern entertainment doesn’t merely distract; it trains the nervous system to expect constant stimulus. Poetry, by comparison, demands a different kind of attention, one that can feel physically unfamiliar to people raised on screens. Morgan’s claim about “perceptions” suggests that poetry works less like information and more like a cognitive throwback - rhythm, repetition, metaphor, ritual speech. Not “content,” but an ancient interface for fear, awe, grief, desire.
The soldier’s vantage point sharpens the stakes. A life organized around consequence tends to distrust disposable feeling. In that context, “Stone Age” reads as survival tech: language that compresses experience when the world turns brutal or wordless. Morgan isn’t pleading for poetry’s relevance; he’s arguing it’s older than relevance, and that’s precisely why it can still cut through the cultural static.
The subtext is that modern entertainment doesn’t merely distract; it trains the nervous system to expect constant stimulus. Poetry, by comparison, demands a different kind of attention, one that can feel physically unfamiliar to people raised on screens. Morgan’s claim about “perceptions” suggests that poetry works less like information and more like a cognitive throwback - rhythm, repetition, metaphor, ritual speech. Not “content,” but an ancient interface for fear, awe, grief, desire.
The soldier’s vantage point sharpens the stakes. A life organized around consequence tends to distrust disposable feeling. In that context, “Stone Age” reads as survival tech: language that compresses experience when the world turns brutal or wordless. Morgan isn’t pleading for poetry’s relevance; he’s arguing it’s older than relevance, and that’s precisely why it can still cut through the cultural static.
Quote Details
| Topic | Poetry |
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