For a Poetics of Verse

Abstract

Reader! No time for pleasantries.The study of poetry is still obstructed and dominated by the unsolved question as to what poetry is. Most have concluded that it is unproductive to try to answer this question too quickly or even, perhaps, to ask it. This creates a block. Where terms such as poetry, lyric, and form remain academically current, they may do so as a kind of revered but disbelieved magic. Lyric suffers from some of the same difficulties as poetry (Culler; Prins; Terada). These difficulties go further than those attending any indistinct yet prevalent cultural concept. They concern also the long “war embrace” between poetry and philosophy, an antagonistic cooperation (Coleridge 191).