jeff newerry

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The Function of Poetry

2/2/2011

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[T]he function of poetry, like that of science, can only be fulfilled by the conception of harmonies that become clearer as they grow richer. As the chance note that comes to be supported by a melody becomes in that melody determinate and necessary, and as the melody, when woven into a harmony, is explicated in that harmony and fixed beyond recall; so the single emotion, the fortuitous dream, launched by the poet into the world of recognizable and immortal forms, looks in that world for its ideal supports and affinities. It must find them or else be blown back among the ghosts. The highest ideality is the comprehension of the real. Poetry is not at its best when it depicts a further possible experience, but when it initiates us, by feigning something which as an experience is impossible, into the meaning of the experience which we have actually had.

George Santayana, “The Elements and Function of Poetry,” Aesthetics and the Arts (McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1968), edited by Lee  A. Jacobus Thank you, Jim Finnegan, for the quote.
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    O for a muse of fire,
    that would ascend
    The brightest heaven

    of invention . . .
    --Shakespeare, Henry V, Prologue


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  • Home
  • Biography
  • Writing
    • Cross Country
    • A Stairway to the Sea
    • The Gulf Stream: Poems of the Gulf Coast
    • Brackish
    • A Visible Sign
  • Teaching
    • Curriculum Vita
    • Teaching Philosophy
  • Contact