A magical book about poetry

The Life of Poetry by Muriel Rukeyser. Stunning manifesto on the importance of poetry.

Summarised here:

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/rukeyser/life.htm

Here's one paragraph I like a lot:

Everywhere we are told that our human resources are all to be used, that our civilization itself means the uses of everything it has the inventions, the histories, every scrap of fact. But there is one kind of knowledge  infinitely precious, time-resistant more than monuments, here to be passed between the generations in any way it may be: never to be used. And that is poetry.