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Resources for Writers WHAT IS POETRY? Here are some of the definitions of and ideas about poetry that have been advanced over the centuries. Ralph Waldo Emerson "It is not metres, but a metre-making argument, that makes a poem,--a thought so passionate and alive, that, like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing." (from "The Poet") T. S. Eliot "A raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating." (from "East Coker", pp 172-180). William Barrett "If poetry does not touch the daily round of our existence somewhere or other, then we ourselves have become homeless on this earth. The figure of the poet thus represents a dimension of our human being, the loss of which would leave civilized man an emotional cripple. What is the difference between poet and technician? The poet walking in the woods loses himself in the rapture of its presence; the technician calculates the bulldozers that will be needed to level it. At some point in our life we have to follow the poet in that “wise passiveness,” to learn to let be, or we remain forever caught in the nervous clutch of our willfulness." (from The Illusion of Technique: The Search for Meaning in a Technological Civilization) |
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