Pleasure and Pulse
Why Poetry Matters More Than ever
Sumiko Martinez
Even through the Zoom screen on which we are meeting, Katharine Coles radiates a certain gravitational energy. With an aesthetic somewhere between the serene ascetism of a monk and the understated elegance of an Edwardian noblewoman, listening to her talk about poetry is irresistible. Though it’s been a very long time since I last sat in an English literature class, I feel transported as I listen to her wax—well, poetic—on what matters so much about poetry: pleasure.
To say that pleasure matters sounds almost anathema on a college campus at this moment in time. Much of our daily work is focused on the serious work of teaching, researching and writing, setting our students up for life and career success, maintaining budgets and buildings, organizing lectures and events, or preparing for the next big fundraising cycle. In a place where the life of the mind is paramount, the idea of pleasure seems abstract, an object for discussion and debate rather than an actual felt and lived experience.
But according to Coles, “The only reason for poetry actually to exist right now is pleasure.” A poet and Distinguished Professor of English who has spent decades as both an academic and public practitioner of the art form, Coles speaks with the eloquence of her experience. Poetry does not lend itself to simple, instant gratification, but rather schools us in the depths of pleasure that can only be achieved through sustained engagement with difficulty.
For undergrads who are not quite convinced that poetry is worth the trouble, Coles draws parallels to a newer art form: video games. She asks her students whether they derive pleasure from games because they’re easy or because they’re hard; the answer, of course, is the latter. It isn’t the ease of beating all the levels of a video game that brings satisfaction, but rather the unique pleasure that humans derive from untangling a tricky puzzle. Says Coles, “Poetry keeps rewarding engagement with difficulty and pleasure in the same little knotted space, over and over again. The poem is changing under your hands constantly. The minute you think you know it, then you don’t know it again.”
Poetry’s metamorphic quality stems from its fundamental grounding in the human body. “The rhythm of poetry arises out of and returns to the music of the body,” Coles notes, describing how she has her students dance to
Poetry offers permanence
This felt rhythm was essential to poetry’s origins, when verses were sung and repeated around communal fires long before the advent of writing systems. For thousands of years, poetry carried news, history, and culture through a lineage of human voices and memories. Today, when our news feels like a lightning-fast onslaught, poetry offers permanence. As Coles observes, we’re “still getting the news from Homer,” whose epic poems from millennia ago continue to resonate with contemporary readers about war, pride, and human frailty.
Students are responding, seeking out the challenge and joy of engaging with poetry. Last year, over 650 University of Utah graduate students and undergrads were enrolled in creative writing classes. The program has a particularly strong poetry contingent, boasting two of Utah’s former poet laureates and an award-winning faculty, several of whom recently received accolades from the 2025 Utah Book Awards.
In our current moment, the importance of poetry becomes newly relevant. It doesn’t offer easy answers or immediate comfort, but something more valuable: the assurance that humans have always faced the unknown and found ways to transform it into lasting beauty. As Coles puts it, poetry connects us to “the endurance of human capacity and human making and the human heartbeat.”
That visceral connection, grounded in pulse and pleasure, may be exactly what we need to navigate an uncertain future.