"Poetry is something more philosophic and of graver important than history". Discuss.

To determine the importance of poetry as opposed to
history, the two genres should be considered in terms of their content.  The good poet
uses his or her art to provide the reader with a view of the inner heart and soul of the
individual poet.

History, in turn, is more collective. It
is an apparently concrete depiction of events that occurred, as provided by eye
witnesses or historical documents. Hence, its focus on realism is more concrete and less
philosophic than that of poetry.

Poetry, however, could
also be collective. This is clear when different epochs of poetry are considered.  In
ancient times, for example, the epic poem was the norm, with its focus on the morality
of the hero. Currently, the free form is more common, having started with the poetry of
Walt Whitman and his focus on the celebration of self.

What
makes poetry more important than history is its honesty. Too often, history tends to
favor the perspective of its writers.  For centuries, for example, South African
colonialists have favored the white perspective of the country’s history, all but
burying the contribution of black South Africans to what the country has become. It has
been more difficult, however, to bury the poetry of the
oppressed.

Poetry is raw emotion in response to the events
of any given time.  The emotional content and subsequent basic honesty of emotion in
poetry creates in it a genre that is a far more accurate indication of the human
experience than formal history can ever be.