Poets express a vision that will give enduring and universal life to what was merely transitory and particular. Since poets are social beings, moreover, they do so in forms that are intelligible and pleasurable to others, and which communicate emotions similar to their own.
Traditional poetry has the greater store of principles.
Poetry is language organized for aesthetic purposes. Poetry must not only describe but bear witness. A poem is distinguished by the feeling that dictates it and that which it communicates, by the economy and resonance of its language, and by the imaginative power that integrates, intensifies and enhances experience. Poems bear some relationship to real life but are equally autonomous and independent entities that contain within themselves the reason why they are so and not otherwise. Art is a way of knowing, and is valuable in proportion to the justice with which it evaluates that knowledge.