My dear ones, poets are an investment for the country. Poets are among the dearest and most valuable assets of every country. Of course, all artists are some source of investment, but poets and their poetry have certain characteristics among all types of artwork that makes the value of a poet increase. They are an investment and a provision. Well, this investment should be employed by the country during sensitive times. This is a very clear and obvious point: When the country needs help in the area of cultural, political and social matters, or in the area of popular relationships and social bonds, or in time of confronting foreign enemies, this saving grace should come in handy like the savings we hold in the National Development Fund – which is a place for saving our oil revenues so they come in handy somewhere and someday. So, if we compose poems that do not have any position on the current issues of the country, such poems will not fulfill the needs of the country. Poems should take on a certain position.
Of course, you know that – as I have said many times in this meeting – I do not support the idea that all of the poems you compose should, necessarily, be politically oriented and committed poems. This is not the case. There is nothing wrong with composing ghazal and romantic poems. After all, such poems are in the nature of poets. There is nothing wrong with this, but even in such poems – in ghazals and romantic poems – there should be some layers of guidance, not layers of corruption and deviation. This point should be observed, but what I am saying is that I do not expect you to address political matters from start to finish when you are composing a ghazal.
It is possible that you dedicate three, four couplets to emotional, romantic and other such concepts, and that you suddenly include two instructive couplets in the middle--like a lancet that is suddenly pushed into the body of a patient. This was what our good poets did in a continuous manner. They composed a sonnet, but in that sonnet, you suddenly see that two couplets have touched on a sensitive issue. This way they would revive a forgotten issue and highlight it. After all, poems should be lively.
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