When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

Power's quiet enemy

There's something almost rebellious about this idea—that something as quiet and seemingly impractical as poetry could stand against power itself. Kennedy isn't talking about poetry as decoration or hobby. He's describing it as a kind of moral immune system, the thing that keeps people who have influence from losing touch with what actually matters.

The genius here is recognizing that power doesn't usually announce itself as corrupting. It whispers. It convinces you that your way of seeing things is the only realistic way, that efficiency matters more than beauty, that what can be measured is what counts. Poetry does the opposite—it insists that meaning lives in nuance, that a single image can hold more truth than a spreadsheet, that human experience is irreducibly strange and particular. When you're in the habit of reading or writing it, you become harder to narrow.

This hits differently now. We're all managing some domain—work, family, a community role—where we have to make decisions that affect others. The smaller corruptions happen there: favoring convenience over fairness, your perspective over someone else's completely different reality. Poetry, broadly understood as anything that slows you down and makes you feel the full weight of existence, is how you catch yourself before you drift too far into your own rightness.