In these frenzied, scattered but colourful times of social media, group chats, and endless WhatsApp messages—each one demanding attention through the day and sometimes late into the night—what truly stands out?
People are scrolling. I see shop workers on their lunch breaks, men and women of all ages, scrolling through TikTok or Facebook videos. It’s a relentless surge of information rushing at them.
The New York Times Books section recently published a poem to soothe the “doomscrolled soul.” It was about Monet’s Water Lilies—a fantastic piece, masterful and exquisite. Within seconds, what was written seconds ago becomes old news and forgettable. But poetry—real poetry—still stops us.
Yes, many people today love sharing fragments of Rumi or short verses on Instagram. That’s fine; the internet has opened a floodgate of would-be poets, and that’s good. Poetry, after all, is a fine discipline for any writer. It forces precision—it’s language in a capsule.
But what about the greats? Shakespeare, Blake—who was incredible—Yeats, Keats (what a poet!), Gerard Manley Hopkins, and the moderns. One modern poet often overlooked is Jim Morrison of The Doors. People remember him as a rock icon, not as a poet, yet he published books of poetry. I once owned a copy of his work, and The Celebration of the Lizard stood out. Think of the phrase “a fistful of silence.” That’s vivid writing—introspective and unsettling, yet beautiful. Morrison’s anger was directed inward, not hurled at others.
By contrast, I came across a poem this week—written by an amateur—that used the phrase “maskless people.” I’m not sure what was meant, but it struck me as dismissive, even contemptuous. Ordinary people reduced to a label. That kind of writing troubles me. It’s one thing to be angry—it’s another to dehumanise. Poetry can express rage, but it shouldn’t lose empathy.
That’s what makes the Water Lilies poem so remarkable. Yes, the poet acknowledges the chaos—the war in Saigon, the suffering in the world—but asks us, gently, to pause and look at beauty. Monet’s work offers that pause: a moment of colour, peace, reflection. I often find myself studying his paintings online—sometimes I even download them to look at quietly.
There are countless sites and social media groups where poetry thrives today. Whatever your taste, there’s something out there for you. As for me, I simply respond to certain kinds of poems more than others. You may love that “maskless people” line; others may not even know the background of the Water Lilies poem. But that’s fine.
The point is this: poetry still has the power to stop you in your tracks. Whether it’s about the ocean, water lilies, love, life, adventure, pain, or wisdom—it speaks to human emotion. That’s its enduring gift.
We can remember Whitman, E.E. Cummings, Robert Frost—and for South Africans, N.P. van Wyk Louw (1906–1970), one of the great Afrikaans poets of the Dertigers movement, whose command of language and philosophical themes made his work unforgettable.
Even amid the scroll and the share, poetry holds its ground. It breathes. It waits. And sometimes, if we’re lucky, it finds us again.
Read the poems mentioned:
