Poetic Possibilities

I get some interesting messages on the English Lecturer Facebook page: ‘The poet should prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities.’ Mmm.

This requires strong coffee :-). I go to Joyce for a response: ‘Time has branded them and fettered they are lodged in the room of the infinite possibilities they have ousted’ (James Joyce, Ulysses).

This led me to think of T S Eliot on poetry (this happens quite a lot even though I specialise in literature 1660-1830). Eliot is Eliot after all.

A few thoughts from T S Eliot on poetry:

‘the abstract conception

Of private experience at its greatest intensity

Becoming universal, which we call “poetry”‘.

‘poetic originality is largely an original way of assembling the most disparate and disparate and unlikely material to make a new whole’

‘There is a logic of the imagination as well as a logic of concepts’

What a lovely interesting way to start my day. I fear it will go downhill intellectually from here! Have a good day everyone 🙂