The Voice of Poetry in Cultivating Cosmopolitan and Democratic Imagination

Abstract

This chapter illuminates the irreplaceable value of poetry in cultivating a cosmopolitan and democratic imagination. The authors contend that poetry evokes unanticipated or overlooked ideas, emotions, and possibilities; it provokes people to look beyond their settled views. Poetry uniquely fuels their ability to engage new thoughts, values, and practices. This ever-renewing quality of mind can, in turn, help people reimagine the nature and value of education continuously as circumstances and the needs they call out evolve. The authors suggest that these imaginative capacities are significant given the cosmopolitan and democratic challenges, and prospects, generated by an intensifying process of political, economic, and cultural globalization. The chapter features a reading of Walt Whitman’s well-known epic poem, “Song of Myself” (first published in 1855), which the authors show both articulates and enacts the most profound promise in a cosmopolitan and democratic imagination.