What is poetry?

French poet, novelist, and filmmaker Jean Cocteau said, "The poet doesn't invent. He listens." Indeed, one would find much support for Cocteau's position from the Romantics, who believed poetry to be, in Emerson's words, "all written before time was." The idea of poetry as something that is written in the stars is an intriguing one, for it elevates the poet above mere mortal to some level of divine ambassador.

Of course, for poets like Shelley and Emerson, poets were divine ambassadors of timeless words. While I can't say that I necessarily believe poets to be creatures of divinity, I do find some of the Romantics views on poetry and poets to be especially well-formed. In "A Defence of Poetry", Shelley writes that poetry is that which illuminates the imagination and strenghtens our morality:

Poetry enlarges the circumference of the imagination by replenshing it with thoughts of ever new delight, which have the phower of attracting and asimilating to their own nature all other thoughts, and which form new intervals and interstices whose void for ever craves fresh food. Poetry strengthens that faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man, in the same manner as exercise strengthens a limb.

Shelley's insight into the power of poetry is, in my mind, remarkable. Who can deny the power of a beautiful poem on the imagination? I defy anyone who can read Wordsworth or Keats, Byron or Browning, and not feel their imagination ripening with each stanza. The power of words on our hearts and minds is undeniable.

It is not only Shelley's belief in the power of poetry on our imagination and moral compass that I found compelling, but also his view that a great poem reconciles all of the negative aspects of life with the lovely and positive aspects of our world. He writes,

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: it marries exultation and horror, grief and pleasure, eternity and change; it subdues to union under its light yoke all irreconcilable things.

Through poetry's exultation of the beautiful, we are able to cope with our grief and pain, reconciled to the belief that though we may suffer, there is still enormous beauty in the world. In this way, Shelley's view on poetry poetry is much the same way that I view my Christian faith. While there are undeniable evils in the world, I am able to cope with these because my faith also provides me with emotions such as hope, love, forgiveness, and faith. Without these parts of living that are so wonderful, life would be overwhelmingly depressing. Similarly, a world without poetry, a world which is filled with, in Shelley's words, the "deformed", would be a world of horrors, without hope, or beauty, or imagination.