Platonic Emulation—How the Weight of History has come to Define Poetry
A solution to this can be found by analyzing historical considerations of poetry. As with many artistic mediums, painting being an excellent example, there have been numerous trends and iterations within poetry which would not (probably) be recognized as poetry be preceding generations. What must instead be attempted is a distillation of the common features of poetry across historical time periods, with the soul of poetry only becoming apparent as certain threads are carried across these vastly different incarnations. What is found at the culmination of such an investigation is somewhat of a Schroedinger’s Cat; poetry both is and isn’t many things, and seems to exist in a hyperstate between opposing forces. Torn between the historical and traditional compunction to prioritize form, and the modern need to express emotionality and atmosphere at the detriment of form, poetry exists as a chimera. What is most interesting is the formation of the beast, as its last parts were only added in the relatively recent past.
For most of human history poetry has been the domain of the educated, a kinder way of saying the elite. Even those poets who contributed to medium while suffering a dearth of social empowerment — Ann Hawkshaw in the 1800’s, for example — had the luxury of education, an education which prioritised certain Classical selections. Principal amongst these are the works of earlier poets (starting with Homer and moving forwards through history), a compliment to which was often found in the philosophy and works of Plato. Plato himself can be seen reflected in much published poetry, his reflection often distorted and taken in parts. This partial assimilation of Plato often works to incorporate aspects of his broader philosophy (the realm of perfect forms, the betterment of man through the internal and external emulation of greatness), while notably deviating from his rather stringent views on poetry. This is, at least to my mind, a predictable response to such conflicting information. If you were a poet, and were raised on the Classics and the work of great philosophers, you would probably take the parts from them which inspired you and leave behind the parts which invalidate your profession/passion — in this case the creation of poetry. This subtle historical prominence has had striking, if not overt, ramifications in regards to the development of poetry, a deeper investigation of which becomes intrinsic to the understanding of the poetical ideal.
A closer look at Plato must first begin with his most striking dialogues on poetry — those being principally found in books II, III, and X of the Republic. These dialogues frame poetry in two pivotal ways, “1: Mimêsis imitates or produces appearance alone, not the truth about things (595b602c). 2: Mimetic poetry arouses the soul’s worst feelings (602c606d)” (Pappas). This distillation places poetry at a tertiary level of mimesis; nature emulates the true forms, and poets emulate nature. This leaves them twice removed from the ‘truth’ of the world, and therefore inherently corruptive in the context of the Republic. This is, truthfully, ironic — Plato himself is responsible for the reproduction of Socrates’ dialogues in whole, and his writing itself acts as an ‘emulation’ of the original Socrates. What is pivotal to the Plato’s argument is that most of the fault which he finds in poetry can be boiled down to their tendency to be emulative — but emulative of what? Already mentioned are the “true forms”, also known as Platonic forms. These forms can be taken as mathematical perfect circles — never found in nature, but a perfect distillation of all circles, at least as perceived by man. Similar examples can found with trees, which grow in a variety of shapes but are somehow all recognizable as ‘trees’. The perfect form is then in this shared “tree-ishness”, the essence of a tree which is inherently understood (Pappas). It is this concept of a distilled and perfect form which seems to be sought by most poets in an attempt to express their conception of the world.
Many poets — here using the Romantics as an example — attempt to distill their dearest subject matter into its truest form; the unchanging pastoral English countryside, the eternally blushing maiden smiling at you from the garden, a love which stands fixed and true like the North Star. But, the real British countryside — particularly at the height of the industrial revolution — would have been littered by smokestacks and the signs of industry, a real maiden quickly loses her luster and descends into mere flesh and bone, and the ideal love is obfuscated by the passing of time and the fickle nature of emotions; in the end none of these paradigms hold up when confronted with the harsh winds of reality. This, rather paradoxically, does not serve to diminish their value but instead creates crystal castles carefully crafted of spun glass, delicate and fleeting but fantastical and wonderful. How can this form of mimesis, which draws so heavily from the perfect forms emphasised by Plato, also fly in the face of his opinions on emulation itself?
Plato the man, akin to his prior definition of poetry, is a fraught character — as man has a right to be. In perhaps a grand and unintentional master-stroke of humor (the dialogues on which were lost, as fascinating as they probably were), Plato often represents himself in his “Platonic” form. A man of perfect adherence to personal philosophy, in-step with the machinations of truth and deception, a vanguard of the correct and honest. This is, perhaps, his greatest lie. The majority of the humor in this observation comes from the fact that Plato represents himself in a manner similar to that which poets frequently implement to characterize scenes of (realistically detached) beauty. In much the same way that Romantic poets had the presence of mind to not detail the billowing clouds of industrial factories, Plato represents himself as if his word is truth
— omitting the fact that even he seems to make adjustments to his opinions over time (normally without overt admittance that he is contradicting himself). This portion of his own self-representation is a pleasurable illusion and, “Pleasure, what drives and feeds the lowest part of the soul, is already diagnosed in the Republic as apparent pleasure. So just because a mimetic work generates illusions it feeds the part of the soul, the ignoble part, that thrives on the pleasures of illusion” (Pappas). Plato then is already guilty of dishonesty, an observation which may lend credence to the historical amnesia surrounding his disregard for poetry — at least within artistic spheres, which drew from his philosophical insights and ignored his condemnation of the creative arts.
Proof of this mutability can be found in Plato’s later published Laws, which works to not only enshrine his prior negative view of mimesis, but also takes great pains to incorporate a sense of mystical possession, or inspiration, into poetical creation. “... The goodness of good poetry does not result from skill or knowledge in its author, or not from that alone. Muses or other deities have taken over the minds of those poets, who then write in an enthousiazôn “possessed” state; “inspired…” (Pappas). This is a fascinating bent to his prior definition of poetry — that of pure mimesis, meant to pleasure the most depraved aspects of mankind through intentional (and untruthful) reproduction of greatness. It gives an almost (dare I say) poetic interpretation to his earlier statements, invoking a state of artistic madness induced by the muses. This is, at its core, the most contradictory statement put forth by Plato in regards to his estimation of poetry (interestingly, this imagery of “muse possessed inspiration verging on madness” is beloved to poets, and many jump at the chance to claim it). The contradiction lies in the fact that the muses themselves are perfect forms — the perfect forms of various types of creation. That they invoke madness in mortals to their whims is therefore not so much an act of mimesis as he first posited. Are Plato’s dialogues themselves not ‘inspired’ by his contemplation of perfect forms? What then separates poets, who are ‘overcome’ by perfect forms?
The final answer, at least in regards to Plato is, not much. Proof of this can be found in his Phaedrus, wherein “Plato has Socrates describe and compare four kinds of “divine madness” (mania); and in his ranking, the madness of poets, inspired by the Muses, is second only to the madness of philosophers, inspired by Eros (244a ff)” (Planinc 8-9). This fundamentally confuses not only Plato’s relationship to poetry, but also the quality of understanding which many poets and historians have claimed to possess in regards to his work. Plato, for all of his drang und sturm, cannot resist being made in a platonic form — one of whom innumerable historical recreations have been made, mimesis atop mimesis, thrice removed. “When we wish to honor the man, we often say that the history of philosophy is nothing but a series of footnotes to Plato. Far from it: Plato is seldom more than a footnote in the works of others” (Planinc 4).
This final mimesis, that of the progenitor for most of the vocabulary which will be used throughout the rest of this essay, demonstrates most effectively how the whims of culture and circumstance can dictate interpretation. Much like how the definition of poetry has proven itself infinitely mutable, the interpretations of Plato’s work is often manipulated to a similar extent and equally beholden to the power of society. Plato then works not only to define the world created by poets (that of perfect forms and distilled images), but to exemplify the nature of poetry — entirely in the hands of the culturally empowered to assign meaning and value to. Since his death and entrance into the hallowed halls of “Classical Education”, Plato’s words have been manipulated to reinforce causes and beliefs of which he could never have begun to imagine, much less support. In much the same way the definition of poetry is mutable, often taking forms which would have scandalized its historical practitioners.
The preoccupation with poetry — at least in regards to its morality — seems to have been lost by the loosely titled ‘Medieval Ages’, though aspects of it do remain from Plato’s time.
What is interesting, is the point that many of the aspects which Plato most vilified (again, the fact that this is ignored is not incredible in light of Plato’s rather exploited nature within the historical record) are here shown in prominence. Much contrary to the monicher of “the Dark Ages”, the medieval world was alight with the power of inspired creation. Much of this creation was used to reconcile cultural identity with historical circumstance, an example of which can be found in the Middle English alliterative poem “St. Erkenwald”. The poem itself details the inhabitants of a now Catholic London being confronted with a literal ghost of England’s past — the spectre of a pagan judge from Britain's ‘savage antecedents’. That this confrontation takes place in London, at the doors of a Catholic cathedral built atop a pagan shrine, is poignant — particularly once one takes into account the fact that, at this time, the past described was not so long dead (Camp and Turner 472). The poem then works using poetical metaphors, the literal layering of the past over the present and the cycle of destruction and creation being prominent. What is most interesting is the fact that the poem also works to reconcile the past and present in a way which enforces certain cultural values. This again presents ties to the legacy of Plato, a character of the past who is cast to rectify the ideals of the present.
By creating a vestige of the ‘savage past’ the poet of “St. Erkenwald” can establish themselves within a timeline, a timeline which culminates in the dominant culture. The establishment of this timeline would have worked to reassess the past and to parse it out into culturally relevant chunks — those that either adhere to or deviate from the cultural norm. The chunks deemed irrelevant are then attributed to the pagan judge, the past risen to remind the inhabitants of London of its repressed presence. “In this transformation process, the poem displays the first of its two major historiographic processes, the cumulative, as it imagines London history as stratigraphically fabricated from fragments of past use” (Camp and Turner 475). Far from the typical image one imagines when they envision an ideal world created through poetry, “St. Erkenwald” attempts to use the ideal forms poetry has the ability to create in order to explain and reinforce cultural beliefs from the time of its composition — that London is built on the back of preceding generations, but only drawing culturally from those who ‘matter’.
This implementation of poetry, to establish identity within a fluctuating historical moment, cuts to one of the truest and most consistent uses of the artistic medium. Where prose is used to explain the world outside the author, poetry here seems used to explain the world within them. That this self-analysis blatantly historicizes the past, taking the parts which are deemed relevant and eschewing those that don’t culminate in their perceived present, is not so uncommon within poetry. An excellent example of this can be found in Plath’s “Daddy”, wherein the author critically represents the character of her father. It is unlikely that Plath’s father was wholly as demonic as she presents him — considering her own struggles with mental health, paired with the fact that such problems are often inherited, it stands to reason he might have had his own issues to contend with — but what is more important than an accurate representation of the world outside the poet is the world as perceived by the poet. Plath’s father is as much a villain in “Daddy” as he felt to her in that moment, with all of the agency attributed to him being formed from pieces of Plath’s past which reinforce that villainy.
The contention that poetry is used to present a perceived or aspirational world, and not the world as it is, could stand to be clarified before more is said. It must be admitted that all of our lives, and even our most frank observations of the world around us, are affected by an interpretational lens. What distinguishes “St. Erkenwald” and “Daddy” from these, already implicitly affected, observations is a certain amount of intent. A counter-example which may clarify the point is the prose of the Russian author Dostoevsky. One of his lesser known novels (at least compared to the towering giants of Crime and Punishment and The Idiot), The House of the Dead works to represent the horrendous conditions and characters found within a Siberian gulag. The novel itself is semi-autobiographical, Dostoevsky having spent several years in a similar Siberian prison, but the novel does more to assess and understand the world outside the author than the world inside him. The point of the novel is not to showcase an enhanced understanding achieved by the protagonist, it instead works to describe a tragic fact of life which applies not only to those within the gulags, but to the whole of the Russian people who live in a system which supports them. Where “St. Erkenwald” and “Daddy” work to create the present out of only the ‘correct’ parts of the past, The House of the Dead instead works to comment on the present in light of the past. The inmates are not portrayed as being wholly ‘savage’, or as bone-deep villains (‘nazis’), they are instead portrayed as being interesting and fascinating characters who, yes, possess a startling capacity for violence — but no more than their similar capacity for grace. Simply put, Dostoevsky is not using The House of the Dead to construct and reify his own identity or an essentialized world, he uses it to comment on the world outside of himself as he perceives it to truthfully be.
This argument is not to say that the very personal struggles represented in historical and semi-(auto)biographical poetry are not important drivers of cultural creation. The aspirational worlds created by poetry can often be more salient to an audience than simple, truthful, recreation. It is in the drama inherent within its crafting, the satisfaction of all of the pieces adding up into a perfectly formed whole. There is a sense of peace in the order of it, in the feeling that everything has been leading up to the moment presented in the poem. Poets throughout history have leveraged this human pleasure, and incorporated aspects salient to their current society to better sell their created worlds to an audience. Dante Alighieri is a fascinating early example of this, and in his construction of his Divine Comedy he can be shown to leverage fundamental aspects of his culture in the creation of a poetically attractive and salient representation of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. The work itself has endured the test of time because of this construction, which speaks to the interior character of the reader and the writer more than it works to comment on the world without.
Throughout the middle-ages there was a distinct line drawn between the Aristotelian ‘mechanical arts’ and the liberal arts. In the words of Carol Chiodo, “A standard division in medieval classifications of knowledge distinguished the liberal arts, those directed toward the mind, and the mechanical arts, those directed toward the body and the physical world” (1). That this distinction was manipulated by Dante not only shows the poet’s tendency to ‘organize’ the world, but the effect to which cultural context and setting can have on a poetical creation. Throughout the middle ages technology — or the mechanical arts — was regarded as being “... increasingly tied to questions of transcendence. Its identification with the lost human perfection subsequent to the Fall served to underscore its potential role in a renewal of such perfection”
(Chiodo 6). In this way Dante had ample opportunity to correlate the then current advancements in technology with a renewed ability to approach divinity through the creative process. By creating, Dante grows closer to the creator. Dante leverages this mentality in his creation of divine realms, those locales most associated with religion. As Dante describes the architecture of Hell — its various circles and levels — the reader is left with the sense of an argument growing ever finer. Its details telescoping down into a central figure or goal.
This overt influence, the masterful blending of the mechanical arts within poetry (to a certain sense, truly reducing poetry itself to a mechanical art, at least within the context of his time), lends a sense of timelessness to the work. It speaks not only to the human love of organization and purpose, but also to the human need to feel an attachment to something greater than themselves. This is not to say that Dante does not himself engage in a certain amount of historicization — the edge to which has been largely lost in the preceding centuries — he certainly takes his opportunities to place those men whom he reviled in their ‘appropriate’ places within Hell. This narrative works to not only present an attractive idealized world, one where all villains are punished in a suitable fashion proportionate to their villainy, and where the good are raised to the ‘deserved’ paradise, but also to critique the figures of the past. These critiques are in much the same vein as those presented by “St. Erkenwald” and “Daddy”, the whole sublimation of their subjects by their role within the poet’s mind (in this case, representations of villainous savagery or moral decline).
It is from these medieval roots which we can begin to see the first incorporations of platonic forms within poetry — the platonic London, the platonic Hell — and the creation of a solid foundation for poetry as a force which is both controlled by and a shaper of culture. While the examples from this period have a tendency to use the poetical forms which implicitly allude to their cultural work, the precedent here set will carry forwards and encourage further mimetic iterations on the theme of culture. It is not wholly obvious if these poets intended to truly shape their cultures, or if they instead chanced upon it in an effort to better understand themselves relative to it. The personal vs. consumptive nature of poetry itself does not solidify for another couple centuries, as poetry is formally inculcated within court culture.
Court culture, with poetry standing as a charming bauble, is a rigorous world. A certain duality of meanings exists throughout most interactions, and this duality carries over into the poetry generated by the great courts of Europe. Particular examples of this can be found within the court of the English Renaissance, where poetry must create an idealized world within the constraints of court politics. This was perhaps not a personal compunction of the poets themselves so much as a necessary survival tactic. Thomas Wyatt’s “Whoso List to Hunt, I Know where is an Hind” here stands as an excellent example of perfection tempered by political place. The poem itself, though subtly, is rather apparently about the then Queen of England, Anne Boleyn (Karmiol). The obfuscation of her character within the poem works to both protect her and Wyatt from the wrath of the infamously pugnacious King Henry VIII. This very real and tangible danger presented to the poet on the basis of their work strongly affects poetical representations thenceforward. When all poems are made to be consumed by the elite, and the elite are actively working to inspire Game of Thrones, a certain amount of delicacy is required. This is not to say that poets were completely beholden to those more powerful than them, even in Wyatt’s “Whoso List to Hunt, I Know where is an Hind” there are passages which are intentionally emulative of the works of earlier poets. For example, “Wyatt writes, "Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am." The Latin phrase on the collar, "Touch me not," makes clear that she is owned by another man. This is a deliberate divergence from the original Petrarchan sonnet, in which the hind explains that the collar is meant to free her, even from Caesar's ownership” (Karmiol). This is perhaps the most subtle piece of social commentary within the poem, and one so insidiously interwoven so as not to inflame the anger of the king. In a masterful turn Wyatt creates two worlds, one for the King and one for those who know who Petrarch is. Whereas the King sees himself compared to Caesar, the proud owner of that which is highly coveted by a large majority of men, Wyatt’s allusions and subversions of Petrarch’s earlier work add an additional and quite contrary layer of captivity to the poem.
This implementation of mimesis for the sake of deepening the meaning behind a simple statement is perhaps the greatest gift of historical tradition. The manner in which it allows poets to play with an experienced reader’s expectations, or to insert a significant amount of meaning without many words being said, holds few comparisons within the world of prose. This allows us to further extract another key feature of poetry. Not only does it create an essentialized world, formed from the various experiences of the poet, it also works to subtextually incorporate meaning from earlier works in a manner which is implicit to the fabric of the poem itself. The nearest prosaic approximations of this are often found in works alluding to the religious canon, which is founded enough within Western society to operate implicitly within most texts which allude to it. In the case of poetry the allusive stock which poets may draw from is far broader, not requiring a seal of ecclesiastical approval before they may enter the ‘canon’. This form of mimesis is most interesting in its partial assimilation of platonic philosophy. It is important to remember that while Plato himself derided mimetic creation, he was a staunch supporter of living one’s life in the intentional emulation (both inwardly and outwardly) of great men (Pappas). This does not count itself as mimesis to Plato, for in his worldview a man bettering himself was not comparable to the liberal arts. But, in the wake of Dante and his contemporaries’ contributions to the understanding of man — keyly that the act of self-creation was comparable to any act of creation, mechanical or otherwise — Plato’s line of distinction begins to be blurred.
This blurring effect will carry on throughout history, with the Romantic period further problematizing Plato’s estimation of poetry. We must remember that comparisons of these artistic movements against his body of work do hold value, for what does poetry seek to accomplish but to lead its readers out of the cave? To remove the dancing shadows which cloud their vision and replace them with the true forms of the world, distilled in their purity. This capacity, at least in the estimation of the Romantic poets, was intrinsically intertwined with their capacity to be inspired — a term which we have already mentioned Plato conflated with the supernatural and mimetic arts of poetry. We can see echoes of this in Coleridge’s poem, “Kubla Khan”, which conjures images of an exotic landscape — a momentary distraction from which prompts a mournful lamentation at the loss of such potent inspiration. In his lines, “... And on her [an Abyssinian maid] dulcimer she played, / Singing of Mount Abora. / Could I revive within me / her symphony and song, / … I would build that dome in air” (Norton Introduction to Poetry 301). The Abyssinian maid here is presented in imagery very similar to that of a muse, contact with which inspiring great feats of creation and imagination. That the muse and the inspiration fall very close to Plato’s own claims that poets are possessed by a madness endowed by the muses (Pappas) here is made more interesting by the intentional reclamation of the Greek Classics by the Romantics.
This reclamation implies a certain respect for the forms and philosophies espoused by these early thinkers, and indicates that most of the prominent poets of the Romantic period would have been acquainted with at least the most prominent works of poets such as Homer, and thinkers such as Plato. I believe that this acquaintanceship both proves the earlier statement, that Plato is a tool of history, and that Romantic poets themselves knew that the world they described was a distilled and essentialized version of reality — a platonic ideal. That this ideal was most often used in the description of nature has become, if anything, a token representation of the movement. Instead of retreading such well-worn ground, it is more interesting to consider the fact that Romantic writers had a great deal of history which proved that these platonic representations had cultural power. And, amidst a landscape every increasing in technology, used this power to compel social change.
Many of these poets, though benefitting from the boom in technology in certain respects, still proved deeply cautious of technology's capacity to remove man from himself and his place (Linley 539). The increasing inclusion of voices from the past worked to ameliorate these concerns, conjuring shades from history in much the same way “St. Erkenwald” uses the pagan judge. It is of no small consequence that the lyric — an Ancient Greek poetical form formally named by Aristotle, student of Plato himself — comes into distinct prominence during this period (Linley 538). In a world which was increasingly technical, and wherein the broader public fascination was being directed towards these innovations, it is no surprise that poets would have felt disjointed. Their intentional conjuring of a world pre-industry then comes to represent a return to human-centric ideals. By directing their attention at the natural and the human, the Romantics turned away the advent and increasing power of scientific innovation and circulation.
This trend within Romantic poetry was not solely constrained to the refutation of technology, but began to overtly promote interest in the poet’s pet causes. This is a long way from the origination of poetry — a body distinct from politics — and its earlier antecedents — poetry as subservient to politics. This is perhaps owed to the fact that the broad cultural imagination was captured by technology as never before, prompting the summary rise of the novel and usurpation of poetry in the publishing business. This had a contrary effect to the expected, as it represents not the diminishment of poetry in the cultural consciousness, but instead its elevation to the status of high-art (Linley 536). By no longer being common, and merit of its craft being practised predominantly by members of the upper-class, poetry came to attain a level of cultural significance unparalleled in its agency within the historical record.
No longer beholden to popular political thought of the time — executions on the basis of implied morality had gone out of vogue — poets were free to leverage poetry in a whole host of novel endeavours. One, which has already been passingly mentioned, is that of Ann Hawkshaw’s compendium of sonnets written from the perspective of Anglo-Saxon women, a historically voiceless group. What is most interesting about this production of poems is that each poem is forwarded with a relevant sample of prose — written by Anglo-Saxon historians — about the period in which the sonnet will take place (Bark). This serves a dual purpose, it not only ensures that the reader of the sonnet is “up to date” with the popular historical narrative surrounding a given time period or circumstance, but it also works to further heighten the complete lack of representation the women who are given voice by the sonnets face. Hawkshaw’s sonnet collection is a very pointed political production, imagining not only a far removed historical moment but essentializing that moment down until it is represented by the voices of the hitherto voiceless.
This compunction to give voice to the voiceless, to dogmatically pursue what is right and true in the world, should at least in part be sounding familiar. For, even as they languish in the madness of inspiration, the poets of the Romantic era are just as focused on the production of self-betterment as Plato, and it is from him and his compatriots that the dogma so passionately followed is sourced. Like Plato, the Romantic poets sought to trivialise or relegate the mechanical arts as corruptive. Like Plato, the Romantics sought essential truth in the forms of nature and of imagination. Like Plato, each poet created around themselves the veneer of the “Classical Man” to such an extent that the most infamous of them have been relegated to platonic forms in much the same way as Plato. Byron will always be laughing, honeyed words on his tongue as wine spills forth from his (skull-centric) goblet. Wordsworth will always be found in silent contemplation with a tranquil glade, gazing serenely upon the supple boughs and rolling hills of his home.
The discussion on Plato, which has ran the duration of this paper, then comes into focus. We like to pretend that we are not wholly the products of our culture’s past. That the shadows of those minds who have come before do not loom over us, asking if what we have to say is truly original. But Plato, among others, stands separate. It is hard to name someone without formal education who can knows about Foucault, much less what his work described. On the contrary, Plato stands at the foundation of our culture. Everyone has heard of him, and most everyone can think of at least one thing that he has written (“wasn’t he the guy who wrote that thing about the cave?”), but we shy away from how his understanding of the world has also shaped us. For centuries we have chased his heroes, dappled in sunlight and smiling at us with the kind eyes of a philosopher and a king. Projections of the perfect person, the “Classical Man”, proportions exactly suited to their purpose and aesthetically unparalleled. It is only now, when our cups runneth over and we are confronted with “Classical Men” falling from the woodwork like poorly arranged pots on a shelf, that we begin to question why we needed them in the first place.
When looking at poetry across history it is easy to forget that poetry has always been a potent expression of mankind’s inner self. Either through times of adversity or through times of triumph, man has sought to convey his mind is such as way as to be understood by others. In defeat he begs mercy, and in victory he extols the strength of his arms. What then of poetry?
Much time has been devoted to the sociological ramifications of poetry, the historical struggle between tradition and creation. It is now time to turn our gazes forwards, over strange new vistas which strange new poets will describe in ways previously unthought to us. Whereas in the past these vistas were looked upon with a sense of childlike wonder, the weight of history weighs down on the modern poet just as much as the traditions of poetry itself. We know that we are flawed, and we know that our grandest civilizations will fall to ruin. Some of us decide to live ignorantly, dancing on the ashes of burnt empires like ours is not made of timber and oil, while others attempt to reconcile this luxurious decline with our own recognition of it. The modern world gives us many boons, but in the spaces between the conveniences new worries have a chance to creep in. We have always been preoccupied with establishing our place in the order of things, but in a world built explicitly to entrap and beguile where do we seek guidance? The flickering screens that are sold at lower and lower prices? The talking heads who sell us jade eggs for our yoni and pills for our anxiety, paltry offerings at the altar of the human soul? Plato has said that by emulating our heroes we stand closer to divinity, but what to do when your time’s heroes are all homunculi? This brand on that haircut, worn to this event with that political inclination; identity subsumed by consumerism to the point of idolatry. Modern poetry does not seek to reify these modern gods. In spite of Plato, it does not seek to emulate them. But it is still poetry. To coin a phrase from a rather estimable writer (at least amongst certain circles), “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
Works Cited
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Hunter, J. Paul, et al. The Norton Introduction to Poetry. 9th ed., W.W. Norton, 2007.
Karmiol, Sheri Metzger. "Critical Essay on 'Whoso List to Hunt'." Poetry for Students, edited by Ira Mark Milne, vol. 25, Gale, 2007. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420074703/LitRC?u=anch19713&sid=LitRC&xid=2dd 43662. Accessed 11 Dec. 2018.
Linley, Margaret. “Conjuring the Spirit: Victorian Poetry, Culture, and Technology.” Victorian Poetry41, no. 4 (2003): 53644. doi:10.1353/vp.2004.0012.
Pappas, Nickolas. “Plato on Poetry: Imitation or Inspiration?” Philosophy Compass7, no. 10 (2012): 66978. doi:10.1111/j.1747-9991.2012.00512.x.
Planinc, Zdravko. “Plato through Homer: Poetry and Philosophy in the Cosmological Dialogues.”
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“Poetry.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/poetry.
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Frances Blevins Basketfield is a senior pursuing a Baccalaureate of Arts in English.