Tag: poetry

Aristotle saw poetry as positive

Aristotle, on the other hand, saw poetry as having a positive value: “It is a great thing, indeed, to make proper use of the poetic forms,… But the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor” (Poetics 1459a); “ordinary words convey only what we know already ; it is from metaphor that we can best get hold of something fresh” (Rhetoric 1410b)

–George Lakoff Metaphors We Live By

How to read poetry

On the flyleaf of the anthology there was written the name Dunne, in small careful handwriting, and then, in the same handwriting, blue ink, fountain-pen blue ink, these guides to study: 1) What is the meaning of the poem and what is the experience? 2) What thought or reflection does the experience lead us to? 3) What mood, feeling, emotion is stirred or created by the poem as a whole?

—The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion