If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?
Well, is there?
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These sensations seem to differ slightly from the ones in Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Philosophy of Composition.” “A poem,” he writes, “is such only inasmuch as it intensely excites, by elevating the soul.”
I would embrace this idea, that “beauty is the province of the poem.” I do, though, love Dickinson’s definition — I read it as an awestruck response to the “sublime.”
My personal favorite, is from “A Defense of Poetry,” where Percy Shelley writes:
“poetry is a sword of lightning ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.”
Yeah, that’s the kind of poetry I want to know!
Great quotes!
Considering the quality of their respective poetic oeuvres, I’d be inclined to trust Dickinson’s pronouncements on poetry over Poe’s.
The Shelley quotation reminds me of this bit from The White Goddess:
Apparently Housman’s first test of poetry was whether it made the hairs of his chin bristle when he shaved.
Thanks, I am very fond of the works of both M and P Shelley!
I’m beginning to notice a trend, with what the poets say about poetry. It seems clear that poetry — whether it is chilling, violent, or felt as a rapture of another kind — evokes alarm; the feeling is not subtle, but overwhelming.
I like that Housman uses a Keats quote; it’s just as good as the others — perhaps better! It definitely has the same flavor as Shelley’s “sword of lightning.”
Graves would agree with you about alarm: