Há uma frase em Romeo & Juliet

que não me canso de recordar e repetir, em particular quando ligo a Tv ou pego num jornal e sou confrontado com certas declarações sejam estas na Ar sejam elas do chamado "jornalismo cultural": "It speaks and yet says nothing."

O mesmo se pode aplicar à importância de saber ouvir. Será que, perante a esquizofrénica voracidade de (pretensa) informação, se ouve, efectivamente, aquilo que o (nosso) interlocutor (nos) diz?

Veja-se o que o poeta americano John Hollander responde a esta pergunta:

'Do you see good poetry, or poetry as a fine art, threatened by the internet, by explosions of communications in general? Do you think people have less time/strong attention spans to spend absorbed in a poem than they did even twenty, to say nothing of two-hundred years ago?'

Responde Hollander:

'I’m more worried about people’s ability to pay informed attention—to be able to listen to—rather than merely hear—music, for example; to be able to detect and be negatively affected by specious argument and deception in public speech of all kinds; to know any history and geography; to understand not only something about science but about explanation in general; to read and speak foreign languages—in short, about the fate of knowledge in a discursive world that ignores or suppresses it and can deal only with what it calls "information". When you have educated readers, good poetry will take care of itself.'

Saber ouvir é também uma arte.
Um arte que é urgente praticar e estimular!