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POETRY

This article is an excerption from book "An Introduction to Poetry" by Louis Simpson, 1986.

Plato, Ion, c. 390 B.C.

Many writers have tried to define poetry, describing the aim of poetry, the character of the poet, and how poems are written. Here are a few examples: All good poets, epic as well as lyric, compose their beautiful poems not by art, but because they are inspired and possessed . . . . the lyric poets are not in their right mind when they are composing their beautiful strains . . . they are simply inspired to utter that to which the Muse impels them . . . God takes away the mind of poets and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know them to be speaking not of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of unconsciousness, but that God himself is the speaker, and that through them He is conversing with us.

Horace (65/8 B.C.), Epistle to the Pisos (The Art of Poetry)

The aim of poets is either to be beneficial or to delight, or in their phrases to combine charm and high applicability to life . . . . By at once delighting and teaching the reader, the poet who mixes the sweet with the useful has everybody's approval.

Scaliger, Poetics, 1561

Roscommon paraphrases this: "A poet should instruct, or please, or both." The end [of poetry] is the giving of instruction in pleasurable form, for poetry teaches, and does not simply amuse, as some used to think.

Ronsard, A Brief on the Art of French Poetry, 1565

The aim of the poet is to imitate, invent, and represent things which are, or which may be in a resemblance to truth.

Sidney, An Apologie for Poetrie, 1595

[The poet] commeth to you with words sent in delightful proportion, either accompanied with, or prepared for the well inchaunting skill of Music; and with a tale forsooth he commeth unto you: with a tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney corner. And pretending no more, doth intende the winning of the mind from wickednesse to venue . . .

Ben Jonson, Timber: or, Discoveries, 1641

He is called a Poet, not he which writeth in measure only; but that fayneth and formeth a fable, and writes things like the Truth. For, the Fable and Fiction is (as it were) the form and soul of any poetical work, or poem.

Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads, 1800

Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity; the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind. In this mood successful composition generally begins, and in a mood similar to this it is carried on; but the emotion, of whatever kind, and in whatever degree from various causes, is qualified by various pleasures, so that in describing any passions whatsoever, which are voluntarily described, the mind will, upon the whole, be in a state of enjoyment.

Keats, Letter to Richard Woodhouse, 1818

As to the poetical Character itself (I mean that sort of which, if I am any thing, I am a Member; that sort distinguished from the Wordsworthian or egotistical sublime which is a thing per se and stands alone) it is not itself - it has no self - it is everything and nothing - It has no characterit enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated - It has as much delight in conceiving an lago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the chameleon Poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark side of things any more than from its taste for the bright one; because they both end in speculation. A Poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence; because he has no Identity - he is continually informing and filling some other Body -the Sun, the Moon the Sea and Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute -the poet has none; no identity -he is certainly the most unpoetical of all God's Creatures.

Shelley, A Defence of Poetry, 1821

A poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth . . . . A Poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds . . . . Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds . . . . Poetry turns all things to loveliness; it exalts the beauty of that which is most beautiful, and it adds beauty to that which is most deformed . . . . Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

Poe, "The Poetic Principle," 1848

I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is Taste. With the Intellect or with the Conscience, it has only collateral relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with Duty or with Truth.

Auden, The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays, 1962

Poetry is not magic. In so far as poetry, or any other of the arts, can be said to have an ulterior purpose, it is, by telling the truth, to disenchant and disintoxicate.

© 2001 Elena and Yacov Feldman