For example, an encyclopedia can offer information on elephants. You can discover where they live, what they eat and how they breed. This information is only for practical purposes only. You can grasp the ivory of the elephant, but not its soul. The encyclopedia will not touch on its majesty, wild grandeur, strength or power. The poem can turn the elephant from a museum specimen into the highest concrete visual image that comes alive in the mind of the reader. For the living elephant, we must turn to poetry. Poetry takes all life as its province.
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Its primary concern is not with beauty, not with philosophical truth, not with persuasion, but with experience. Beauty and philosophical truth are aspects of experience, and the poet is often engaged with them. Poetry as a whole is concerned with all kinds of experience ? beautiful & ugly, strange & common, noble & ignoble, actual & imaginary. One of the paradoxes of human existence is that all experience, when transmitted through the medium of art, becomes enjoyable. Even painful experience is pleasurable when poetry romanticizes hard labour, poverty and even death.
Poetry comes to us bringing life, and focuses on giving us a better understanding of life. Between poetry and other genres of literature there is one sharp distinction. Poetry writing is a friend to all writers. Engrossing and honest, poetry extends universally to all members of society. Poetry exists to communicate significant experience imaginatively and creatively, deepening our knowledge of the senses more poignantly. Poetry can be inspirational on the highest level, when it provides the reader with a precious affair, frequently incandescent, giving off both light and heat.
Finally, poetry is a kind of multi-dimensional language. It is directed at the whole person, not just at his understanding. It must involve the reader? ‘s senses, intelligence, emotions and imagination. Poetry achieves its extra dimensions per word by employing devices including metaphor, allusion, sound, repetition, rhythm, irony, symbol, connotation and imagery. Using these resources and the materials of life, poetry, in its highest form, comes alive on the page.
