Four Poets on Poetry

What is poetry? This question has fascinated man ever since the first poet plied his trade. Each age has attempted to answer the question, but no one has been able to define poetry satisfactorily. The world that the poet creates is not the world to which the laws of the scientist, the historian, or the philosopher are applicable. It is not a world of positive statements, but a world of interrogatory thought. For the poet, like the child, is forever questioning his universe and forever rejecting the answers that logical thinkers are only too eager to give him. Therefore, who could be more qualified to comment on the nature of poetry than poets? Recently The Johns Hopkins Poetry Festival was held in Baltimore and four poets were asked to deliver the lectures that appear as essays in this book. Marianne Moore, Mark Van Doren, Yvor Winters, and R. P. Blackmur discuss their art in general and the works of three other poets in particular – Edwin Muir, Dame Edith Sitwell, and Thomas Hardy. An Introduction by Don Cameron Allen, Professor of English Literature at The Johns Hopkins University, provides a frame of reference that lends depth and significance to the contributors’ essays.