If you go into a bar in most places in America and even say the word poetry, you’ll probably get beaten up. But poetry is a really strong, beautiful form to me, and a lot of innovation in language comes from poetry.

Jarmusch contrasts a caricature of American macho anti-intellectualism—where “poetry” is treated as pretentious or unmanly—with his own conviction that poetry is a vital engine of artistic renewal. The barroom image dramatizes social pressure against sensitivity and verbal experimentation, suggesting that cultural norms can police language as much as behavior. By calling poetry “strong” and “beautiful,” he reframes it as resilient rather than delicate, and by linking it to “innovation in language,” he argues that poetic practice (compression, metaphor, rhythm, surprise) feeds new ways of speaking and thinking that later permeate other arts, including cinema and popular culture.