“If it is an imperfect word, no external circumstance can heighten its value as poetry.”
Tip: press → for another quote, C to copy, S to share.
To know anything of a poet but his poetry is, so far as the poetry is concerned, to know something that may be entertaining, even delightful, but is certainly inessential.
We recognise in the finished art, which is the result of these conditions, the best words in the best order - poetry and to put this essential poetry into different classes is impossible.
Poetry is the communication through words of certain experiences that can be communicated in no other way.
There can be no proof that Blake's lyric is composed of the best words in the best order only a conviction, accepted by our knowledge and judgment, that it is so.