Reminds me of a sci-fi short story where the military leaders against an alien (?) invasion keep demanding "harder and sharper" human tools for the war. Finally

Reminds me of a sci-fi short story where the military leaders against an alien (?) invasion keep demanding "harder and sharper" human tools for the war. Finally they need a poet and find they don't have any any more.[1] Though I think that the way classical literature is taught is probably enough to sicken all but the most die-hard readers. Endless dissection of things on a word-by-word basis. Shakespeare (say) wasn't a godlike superhuman imbuing every single word with dozens of layers of meaning. Sometimes it's just a fart joke. Exactly the same as maths teachers drilling integration rules to death and having everyone conclude, not unreasonably, "this is pointless bullshit". Or history teachers listing dates and names. [1]: edit: not aliens, and it's by Alfred Bester: https://archive.org/details/New_Worlds_029v10_1954-11/page/n57/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/New_Worlds_029v10_1954-11/page/n...