Notable Quotable: Shailja Patel

"There is a reason that people seek out poetry, even if they’ve never read a poem in their lives, even if they think poetry is something totally esoteric or trivial or irrelevant. In the most powerful moments of our lives, in moments of love, passion, birth, death, marriage, all the great rituals of our lives, suddenly people want poetry. Nobody has ever read a financial statement at a funeral. Nobody has ever read a political essay at a wedding. So, some part of us really knows that poetry has this incantatory value, this ability to create a kind of power and feeling that is a mystery in some ways, but that is the magic of poetry." -- Shailja Patel