Classic essays on poetry and poetics, suggested by the poets of the NewPoetry email discussion list in response to Jim Finnegan’s question: “If you were to stock a poet’s personal library, filling it with the essential and odd books a poet should own or have ready access to, what titles would be in it?”
Poetics, by Aristotle
Available in many editions, this very brief tome is likely a compilation of Aristotle’s lecture notes, not intended for publication. It is the essential foundation of Western literary analysis, tracing the evolution of praises and curses into epic and satire, tragedy and comedy, and analyzing the techniques and elements by which poets, particularly dramatists, move their audiences.
An Apology for Poetry (or the Defence of Poesy), by Sir Philip Sidney
(ed. R.W. Maslen based on the 1965 edition of Geoffrey Shepherd, Manchester University Press, 2002) Sir Philip Sidney, Elizabethan soldier, poet and courtier, wrote his defense of poetry in the latter part of the 16th century, describing poets as creators of fictional worlds that are useful to society in moving men to ethical action.
Of Dramatic Poesy and Other Critical Essays, by John Dryden
(ed. George Watson, J.M. Dent and Sons, Ltd., 1962) Dryden was the most famous and influential poet, critic and dramatist of 18th century Restoration England, writer of satirical verse comedies for the stage, shepherd of the heroic couplet into its place as predominant English verse form, and translator of the classic writers Horace, Juvenal, Ovid, Lucretius and Virgil into English.Biographia Literaria, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Subtitled “Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions,” this is a collection of Coleridge’s thoughts on topics poetic and philosophical, including his famous distinction between “imagination” and “fancy.”Essays on Art & Literature, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(Volume 3 of the Complete Works, ed. John Gearey, Princeton University Press reprint, 1994) Goethe’s works are mountains on the literary landscape, and his ideas brought the world into transition from the 18th century Age of Reason to 19th century Romanticism.Essays and Lectures, by Ralph Waldo Emerson
(The Library of America, Penguin USA, 1983) For American Transcendentalist Emerson “the poet is representative. He stands among partial men for the complete man, and apprises us not of his wealth, but of the common-wealth.... The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. He is a sovereign, and stands on the centre.”Essays Literary and Critical, by Matthew Arnold
(Kissinger Publishing, 2006) Victorian literary and social critic Matthew Arnold began his writing career as a poet, and in these essays he elevates poetry above science, religion and philosophy, and describes the ultimate poetic values of “high truth” and “high seriousness.”Letters To a Young Poet, by Rainer Maria Rilke
(trans. M.D. Herter, W.W. Norton & Company reissue, 1993) At the very beginning of the 20th century, the great poet Rilke wrote these letters in response to a correspondence initiated by an aspiring poet, and they have been treasured by poets ever since for the wisdom they offer on living the poetic life, authenticity, trust, solitude, artistic vocation...