We know the particular poem, not what it says that we can restate.
We know the particular poem, not what it says that we can restate.
The only real evidence that any critic may bring before his gaze is the finished poem.
In a manner of speaking, the poem is its own knower, neither poet nor reader knowing anything that the poem says apart from the words of the poem.
There is probably nothing wrong with art for art's sake if we take the phrase seriously, and not take it to mean the kind of poetry written in England forty years ago.
A poem may be an instance of morality, of social conditions, of psychological history; it may instance all its qualities, but never one of them alone, nor any two or three; never less than all.
What is the poem, after it is written? That is the question. Not where it came from or why.
So the poet, who wants to be something that he cannot be, and is a failure in plain life, makes up fictitious versions of his predicament that are interesting even to other persons because nobody is a perfect automobile salesman.
I am not ridiculing verbal mechanisms, dreams, or repressions as origins of poetry; all three of them and more besides may have a great deal to do with it.
How does one happen to write a poem: where does it come from? That is the question asked by the psychologists or the geneticists of poetry.
Poets, in their way, are practical men; they are interested in results.
© 2020 Inspirational Stories
© 2020 Inspirational Stories