What's the point of poetry and art?

I stumbled across this....it's been one of those nights when a movie that a friend lent me and a bundle of thoughts about the meaning and nature of poetry took me on a ride around the web...
Mark Gonzales - As With Most Men

Though the thought journey started earlier in the week when another friend shared this with me:
JR TED Prize 2011

The first link I share because I love the starkness, the brutality of saying it as it is and being political and personal all at once - though for the second time in as many years I wonder if the strongest vocalists for feminism these days don't seem to be (a very small band of) men which is grand, but (I fight the urge to trail off miserably) 'taint right that we're all so damn scared of the term 'feminism' or suggesting that sexual politics aren't relevant anymore.  Damnit all people, they are.

The second link I share because, well, watch it.  Because this guy is awesome in what he has done.  His mindfulness and eloquence (visually and verbally) on the purpose of art - to forget you're hungry or miserable or lonely for a few minutes as you contemplate, wonder, argue with it - and the need for it to be done authentically, honestly, anti-corporately, for it's own sake rather than dollars, status, prestige, because there's shit worth saying - are essential components that we need to throw in the mix of what we do when we create, make. I share it too because it's helped me to verbalise how I feel about the two forms of art that absorb me the most - poetry and theatre.

Words, poems, shouldn't be shut up in books; theatre, plays, shouldn't be trapped inside purpose built buildings accessed predominantly by the privileged few (culturally/economically).  Art should be relevant, immediate, and more than anything it should seek to connect.

So I put up the links as fodder for my own treaty I guess. I feel conscious that 'I' am less personally relevant and I want my own poetry to stop being so pretty and self-absorbed.   Fortunately it's mine so I stand a good chance of being able to effect the change.

Here endeth the rant. I guess this is my first 'real' blog.  Bugger, that sounds a lot like conformity.....