Javascript is either disabled or not supported by this browser. Javascript is either disabled or not supported by this browser. This page may not appear properly. Poetry is the most intense and muscial expression of language. Central to human wit is the use of metaphor in which an idea, an abstraction, is compared to an image, an object, event or experience, in such a way that the idea is clarified and the image is enriched.
Great poetry requires exact analysis of inwardly recognized metaphors.
Although this analysis cannot be carried out with scales and rulers, it uses logic, wisdom, and carefully observed interior and exterior experience, and it thereby attains precision. The best prose and the best poetry share many elements of depth, beauty, and intensity, but when properly-conceived musical elements support the meaning within a poem, it always has the edge as powerful language, for it more fully addresses the human person who lives in the world with mind and body.