An idea from the narrator of Nicholson Baker’s book The Anthologist (2009):
Isn’t crying a good thing? Why would we want to give pills to people so they don’t weep? When you read a great line in a poem, what’s the first thing you do? You can’t help it. Crying is a good thing. And rhyming and weeping—there are obvious linkages between the two. When you listen to a child cry, he cries meter. When you’re an adult, you don’t sob quite that way. But when you are little kid, you go, “Ih-hih-hih-hih, ih-hih-hih-hih.” You actually cry in a duple meter.
Poetry is a controlled refinement of sobbing. We’ve got to face that, and if that’s true, do we want to give drugs so that people won’t weep? No, because if we do, poetry will die.
Tell me you sob. Tell me our poetry lives.
What have you read, writer, that made you weep?
Reasons to Keep Writing 