A lot of poems are sad, but over at The Millions, Nick Ripatrazone thinks he’s found the saddest: “Spring and Fall” by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Ripatrazone explores Hopkins’s poem, and while doing so, gives his thoughts on what good poetry can do:

I think the best poetry is a form of interrogation of self. I can move through much of my public day hearing language emptied of its soul by politicians and twisted into service by advertising. But I pray that poetry props-up language.