It is a way we reassess our past. We can do that in poetry in ways we can't do in prose.
“Roughly speaking, this hypothesis asks whether drug use causes some of the diseases officially associated with AIDS, such as immunodeficiency and Kaposi's sarcoma.”
“The actors nowadays, both young men and young ladies, don't always wear their period clothes as well as they might. They tend to stomp around a bit in them.”