The only "place" mentioned in "Poetry" is poetry itself, which
the speaker calls "a place for the genuine." Several literary
scholars have questioned why Moore refers to poetry as a place,
and you can check out the discussion of line 3 in "Detailed
Summary" for more on this. If we try to picture a less abstract
location for this poem, such as an actual place where the
speaker might be saying these words, we might imagine ourselves
in a classroom, having a casual conversation with our literature
teacher after the lesson has ended, or sitting in the local
library with a friend who knows a lot about poetry. In other
words, the setting is a place we might go to learn and study,
but also a place where we can be informal and speak our mind. So
after trudging through a section of Paradise Lost or The Waste
Land, we tell our teacher or friend, "I just don't get poetry,"
and she responds, "You know what? I don't really get it either,
but I'll tell you why I keep reading it and think it's worth all
this trouble…"