Woodlief's Comments on "The Poet" So, what kind of a person is this poet? Some kind of superman? Well, yes, in a sense. As one of the graduate students says, in "Self-Reliance" Emerson empowers everyone; in "The Poet" he says that only a few can really speak well. That's true. The poet is not ordinary, though he is representative. In fact, he is presented almost as a genius-god.
Certainly the poet is special and unusual. As Emerson sees it, the poet (and perhaps this could apply to any artist) has the ability to see and say better than most of us do. Yet what he sees is what we can see, especially after he shows it to us, and what he says expresses our own deepest thoughts and feelings which we cannot organize into language very well.
But note that Emerson is sketching an ideal here, a "flying perfect" (remember "Circles"?) which he has never seen. He certainly does not claim to be that poet himself, although he wrote poetry, and he sees no one around him who comes close. The poet for him is a heroic figure, giving selflessly of his vision so that others might find their own. No wonder he couldn't find such a person. Whereas Poe talks about writing an "ideal" poem, he leaves so much out that we know he is at least partially pulling our leg. Emerson is totally serious; his ideal is probably unreachable, but worth reaching for.
I think what may be most notable about what Emerson says is that his poet, by speaking for himself and from the depths of his own experience and understanding, is also speaking for us non-poets. So in a sense he is more "us" than "we" are ourselves! It's a romantic paradox, but it does have a ring of truth. When you read a great poem--and that's one that you would call great and not necessarily some critic--it should reverberate for you as you tune into it, recognizing its truth and coming to see your own world a little clearer. Emily Dickinson will speak to that; even Poe would agree (although the truths he wants to reverberate are probably somewhat different from what Emerson has in mind.)
What is the poet's subject? Well, anything will do; the magic is in the seeing and the saying. There are no "sacred poetic themes" for Emerson, no sonnets to rosy-cheeked mistresses, no elegies, and definitely no lovers moaning the loss of their beautiful women. He goes to nature because nature is the basis of all universal ideas (and that includes human nature too). Beauty is in the eye of the beholder; nothing which is natural is ugly.
Where the romantic angle really kicks in is with the idea of form. Poe gave us very definite recommendations on form, yet he was also quite adept at going beyond his own recommendations, as when he makes the sounds part of the sense of a poem. Emerson would appreciate that, for he thought that the form should be organic (or grow out of) the idea. Thus every poem would probably be unique to some degree, and it's not a matter of saying "Well, today I feel like writing a Shakespearean sonnet" and then cramming the idea into that form. The best sentence on this is: "For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument, that makes a poem, -- a thought so passionate and alive, that, like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing." Look at that organic image! This is much the same image as Thoreau presented in "Spring" when he talked of the thawing bank as the earth speaking. The form should come from the inside out, not being imposed on the outside. Perhaps this explains why romantic writers created literary forms that no-one had ever seen before, such as Walden or even the structure of Emerson's essays. And just wait until you read Whitman, the great organic innovator himself!
Emerson thinks that the reader, being "liberated" into language by the poet, becomes a kind of poet him/herself. This is his last point because it is probably his most significant one. I would imagine that for him the quality of a poem can be judged only by his effect on the imagination, mind, and heart of its reader, and that effect should be a transforming "metamorphosis" (note another organic image here). Poe also wants an effect, but he calculates his very carefully, so he says. I rather doubt if he is interested in "liberating" his reader although he wants to create a moving emotional experience.
If you look at British romanticism, you will find much emphasis on the poet, a little on the work, and virtually nothing said about the effect of the poetry on the reader. These Americans, from the days of the great sermons on, do seem to want to change people's life and feelings radically, to transform the readers. Interesting. Don't you still see this going on? The rhetoric of persuasion is deep in our culture, and even in our aesthetic theories.
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