1048 PO ET
the contrary, the neglect o f artifactualism may be re
proached as insufficiently attentive to the poem itself.
M any poets who do not articulate an explicit poetics
but discuss the making o f their and others poems are
loosely artifactualist (e.g.,W. B. Yeats, Pablo Neruda,
Cid Corm an), as are many critics who give their at
tention to the sources, genesis, and reception o f par
ticular poems (e.g., Hugh Kenner on Pounds career)
and many critics who are also poets, such as Veronica
Forrest-Thom son. Readers o f Anglo-Am. poetry who
are accustomed to thinking o f historicism and formal
ism as opposed positions may think it odd to find both
standpoints in the same category. Nonetheless, it is the
nature o f a default position to stand invisibly behind
views that ostentatiously stage a com petition even as
they agree in fundamental matters.
Finally, the irreducibilist view is that every poem is
a unique event unassimilable to genres and the other
arts and only m inimally responsive to general values
such as form , craft, or period. Octavio Paz asks, How
can we lay hold on poetry if each poem reveals itself as
something different and irreducible? . . . Poetry is not
the sum o f all poems. Each poetic creation is a self
sufficient unit. The part is the whole. Irreducibil-
ists may be at once the ultimate historicists (not only
every period but every poem its own period must
be read on its terms) and the ultimate formalists (each
poem generates a unique formal protocol that must
be recovered and explained); and while irreducibilism
may accept something like an artifactualist position
in practice, its logical outcom e is properly spoken by
Paz when he asserts that each poem is a unique object,
created by a technique that dies at the very m om ent
o f creation. A strict irreducibilism would hold that,
when poems are susceptible to analysis under rubrics
such as genre or form , they have failed as poems (when
a poet acquires a style, a manner, he stops being a poet
and becomes a constructor o f literary artifacts). A fur
ther step in this doctrine notes that most critics and
readers, fixated on constants in poetry such as form or
style, are unable to recognize what is properly poetic
in the objects they address or the creators who made
them . W hile the irreducibilist strain runs through a
great deal o f historical and contemp. discourse on po
etry, uncom prom ising (as opposed to merely nominal
or superstitious) irreducibilists are rare. The It. philoso
pher Benedetto Croce was one. The kind o f experimen
tal poet who produces poems and perhaps manifestos
but not crit. or who is uninterested in form ulating an
explicit poetics is often an irreducibilist; the Brazilian
m odernist Oswald de Andrade sometimes expresses
such views, and several w ell-known poems o f the
later m odernist era in Brazil (M anuel Bandeiras O
U ltim o Poema [The Last Poem, 1968] and Carlos
Drum m ond de Andrades Procura da Poesia [Search
for Poetry, 1945]) take this stance. Som e o f the less dis
cursive, more atom istic work associated with the era o f
*Language poetry in the U .S. belongs to an irreduci-
bilist impulse (e.g., Bruce Andrews, P. Inm an). Paz is
among the most prom inent poet-critics to embrace the
position w ithout equivocation; it does not impede but
curiously enlivens his most im portant work o f crit.,
concerning the M exican *baroque poet Sor Juana Ines
de la Cruz.
As object and event, an inalienable element o f lives
and societies, the poem responds as much to cultural
and personal notions as to theories and doctrines o f
poetry. It may seem so ubiquitous as to be invisible, so
firmly possessed as to be ours alone, so natural as to re
sist abstraction. To take these conditions into account
while explaining the poem in principle is one o f the
continual challenges o f poetics.
See a r t i f a c t , p o e try as; a u to n o m y ; f i c t i o n , po
e t r y as; in fo r m a tio n , p o e tr y as; k n o w le d g e , po
e t r y as.
I C. Brooks, The Poem as Organism, English Institute
A n n u al 1940 (1941); Abrams; A. Baumgarten, Reflections
on Poetry, trans. K. Aschenbrenner and W. B. Holther
(1954); W. K. Wimsatt, The Concrete Universal (1947)
and with M . C. Beardsley, The Intentional Fallacy
(1946), both in The Verbal Icon (1954); Jakobson, W hat
Is Poetry? v. 3; O . Paz, The B ow an d th e Lyre, trans. R.L.C.
Simms (1973); C. Baudelaire, Oeuvres completes, ed. C.
Pichois, 2 v. (1975-76); B. Croce, Poetry a n d Literature,
trans. G . Gullace (1981); M . H. Abrams, Poetry, Theories
o f (Western), N ew Princeton Encyclopedia o f Poetry a n d
Poetics, ed. A. Preminger and T.V.F. Brogan (1993).
R. G reene
PO ET . The Greeks called the poet a maker poietes
or poetes and that word took hold in Lat. and other
Eur. langs., incl. It., Fr., and Eng. But what precisely
does the poet make? The obvious answer is *poems, the
arrangements o f words that he or she composes. Yet
poets have often been given credit for bolder kinds o f
making. According to ancient Gr. fables, Am phion
built Thebes from stones his songs called into place,
and Orpheuss songs drew trees and beasts and stones to
follow him . Ren. critics allegorized these stories as the
harmonious beginning o f civilization: poets had tamed
the wilderness and softened the hearts o f men. In the
D efen ce o f Poesy, Philip Sidney thought that the poet
delivered a golden world, in making things either bet
ter than Nature bringeth forth, or, quite anew, forms
such as never were in Nature. Potentially that power
o f creation resembles, at one remove, the power o f the
Creator who first made the world. O ther cultures have
also regarded poets as godlike. Vyasa, who is both the
putative author o f the Indian M ah a b h a ra ta and a char
acter in the epic, sometimes seems to be an avatar o f
the god Krishna. And even those who find such exalted
views o f the poet presumptuous or absurd concede that
poets are capable o f making fabulous fictions or myths
(see f i c t i o n , p o e tr y as). Historically, most nations
and societies have preserved poems, usually attributed
to a specific maker, that embody their trads. and values.
The works o f H om er were so revered in ancient Greece
that they supplied the basis o f education. In this way,
the poet can represent a whole com m unity bound by a
com m on lang. and stories that everyone knows.
Thie ideal o f the poet as maker o f golden worlds
and founding myths tends to lose sight o f the maker
o f poems, however, who dwindles to a mere name or
legend. N o one knows with any certainty who Hom er

was or where or when he lived or whether he was blind
or even whether any one person composed the works
attributed to him . Thus, H om er signifies a stamp o f
authenticity, a name that certifies the greatness o f the
poems. The effort to trace a particular person seems
incidental to the aura o f the maker. The first poet re
corded by hist., Enheduanna o f U r (ca. 2 4 0 0 b ce), was
the daughter o f King Sargon and priestess o f Inanna
(Ishtar), whom she magnifies in hymns that also refer
to herself. Yet the goddess, the historical figure, the
poet, and the legend are hard to separate, esp. since
mss. o f these poems date from centuries later. Similar
problems veil the identities o f virtually all early poets.
In works preserved through oral trads. or scattered tab
lets, it is generally impossible to single out the original
maker or to determine whether such an individual ever
existed. O ften the title o f author falls to the scholar
who first put a standard text together or wrote it down.
Thus, the Mesopotam ian E pic o f Gilgamesh is supposed
to have been revised and codified by Sin-liqe-unninni
(ca. 1 2 0 0 b ce), a priest and scribe who lived more than
a m illennium after the work began and who inherited
the honor o f being its poet. M od. ideas o f authorship
are challenged by these attributions. Nevertheless, the
name o f the poet casts a spell, as Sappho lends luster
to every scrap or fragment o f verse ascribed to her. It is
as if the power o f wonderful poems compelled their au
diences to imagine the wonder-workers or divine spirits
who made them . In the Heb. Bible, great hymns and
songs are traditionally associated with inspired leaders
and kings such as Moses (D eut. 32, 33), David (Ps.),
and Solom on (Song o f Sol.). Here the maker o f nations
absorbs the maker o f verses; only someone anointed by
G od seems worthy o f this sublime lang.
From this point o f view, the poet is someone cho
sen, not someone who willfully tries to make poems.
Hesiod, the poet o f the Theogony (ca. 7 0 0 b ce), intro
duces him self as a shepherd tending his flock on Heli
con when the *Muses descended on him , gave him a
staff o f bay, breathed a voice into him , and instructed
him to spend his life singing their praises. Variations on
this theme recur in many other times and places. In a
prologue attached to some versions o f the Ram ayana,
when the illiterate Valmiki sees a hunter shoot a crane,
the cries o f its grieving mate inspire him to invent the
meter (sloka) in which, at the bidding o f Brahma, he
will compose the epic that follows. Another illiterate,
C^dm on, was sleeping in a cowshed, according to
the Venerable Bede (ca. 731 ce), when a mysterious
voice taught him to sing in praise o f God. Sophisti
cated poets o f later eras have also felt themselves to be
chosen sometimes, as with Friedrich Holderlin, al
most against their will. Jo h n Keatss F a ll o f Hyperion
(1856) begins with a vision in which the narrator, in
mortal peril, confronts the possibility that he might be
an idle dreamer rather than a chosen poet; the issue was
unresolved, and the poem remained unfinished. But
many lovers o f poetry still contend that no one can re
solve to be a poet or learn the trade because poets are
born or chosen not made.
To call someone a true poet, therefore, is frequently
less a description than a glorification. The word itself
PO ET 1049
implies a superior talent, if not a touch o f *genius. In
many fields, as Horace famously advised, mediocrity is
quite acceptable a second-rate lawyer can still do use
ful work but neither men nor gods nor booksellers
can abide a would-be poet. A number o f terms distin
guish poets from pretenders, who are called versemon
gers and versifiers, poetasters and rhymers. Even in
mod. times, when canonizing a chosen few might be
regarded as judgmental or elitist, it seems important
to decide who qualifies as a poet and who does not.
Verdicts like these apply to every kind o f verse maker,
to lyricists and *troubadours as well as *poets laureate;
not every candidate can be the real thing. Perhaps a lin
gering sense o f the role o f those poets who once func
tioned as priests and prophets or as the living memory
o f their people accounts for the claims still made for
poets, even in societies that do not award them much
status or financial support. Yet secular eras have also
reserved a special place for those who seem to be born
to the calling. C^dm ons story set a pattern that has
been often repeated. A fascination with natural, un
educated makers o f verse grew esp. strong in 18th- and
19th-c. Britain, when working-class or peasant geniuses
appealed to the reading public; and at least two, Robert
Burns and Joh n Clare, eventually came to be recognized
as major poets. Nature, not art, was supposed to have
formed them and blessed them with inspiration. More
recently, in 1955, M inou Drouet, just eight years old,
became a best-selling Fr. poet (despite suspicions that
her m other had written the poems). Apparently, chil
dren too can be struck by the muse.
A rival view o f the poet, however, would stress the
importance o f learning a craft. From that perspective,
poets are made, not born. As a demanding vocation,
poetry requires unceasing study, a knowledge o f what
other poets have done, a mastery o f *prosody and all
the tools o f verse, and lifelong practice. Such study is
needed still more as the poet ages. Almost everyone is
capable o f writing one heartfelt poem, it is sometimes
said, but only someone devoted to the craft o f poetry
can continue to write and to grow (Drouet stopped
w riting poems when she was 14). Moreover, the poet
must understand the world in order to write well about
it. Through much o f hist., poetry was considered a
type o f learning, and the learned poet furnished
an example to be followed. Scholars and critics often
looked down on writers who were unacquainted with
cl. texts. In The W isdom o f the Ancients (1609), Fran
cis Bacon interpreted Orpheus as a representation o f
universal Philosophy; the archetypal poet was also the
archetypal sage. The association o f poetry with wisdom
spans many cultures. It has been esp. powerful in early
societies around the world, from the Americas to Africa
to Iceland to Java, where native poets have supplied
some basic models o f how to live. But cl. trads. in the
W est have asked the poet for supreme craftsmanship
as well as universal knowledge. In this respect, the
exemplary figure is Virgil, who in late Rom an times
and in the M iddle Ages came to be known simply as
the Poet. Virgil excelled in each o f the genres most
admired in his tim e: *eclogues, *georgics, *epic; he ab
sorbed and improved on the best poems o f the past;
1050 PO ET
in search o f perfection, he wrote only a few lines a day
and constantly revised them ; he created not only in
dividual poems but the pattern o f a full poetic career,
in which the poet progresses through stages until each
work seems part o f one great whole, the lifework o f
the poet. Yet, in addition, Virgil was renowned as a
' vates or seer who had foreseen the com ing o f Christ
and learned the secrets o f the dead and whose works
could be consulted to divine the future (the sortes
V irgiliana). Hence, the Poet, both craftsman and
magus, guides D ante through hell and purgatory in
the D iv in e Com edy until, at the earthly paradise, they
reach the limits o f pagan and earthly knowledge. The
poet D ante acknowledges his master and at the same
time asserts the superiority o f a Christian worldview.
But together the two great poets affirm the value o f
their vocation, a craft that, pursued through a lifetime,
culminates in understanding and bringing word o f first
and last things through art.
In such works, the master craftsman mounts above
any mere hum an being. The Poet may take the name
o f Virgil, but he has gone far beyond the particular per
son who once lived and behaved as other people do.
As characters in the D iv in e Comedy, both Virgil and
D ante are useful fictions, filling the roles they play in
the grand scheme o f the poem. To be sure, the fictional
Dante does draw on the memories and opinions o f the
poet who has created him and whose name he shares.
But the relation between the character and his creator
can never be taken for granted. In the past few centu
ries, many poets have tried to close that gap; they insist
that the voice that speaks in a poem should be the same
as that o f the man or woman who made it. The roman
tics often regarded a capacity for deep feeling as the
mark o f a poet and direct expression o f feeling as the
mark o f a good or authentic poem. In The Prelude, W il
liam Wordsworth gave epic scope to the story o f how
he had realized him self as a poet; and later poets, such
as W alt W hitm an and Vladim ir Mayakovsky, liked to
imply that their work had exposed the naked truth o f
who they were. Rhetorically, that open self-presentation
can help to establish a sense o f intimacy between
writer and reader. O lder poets had also recognized its
power. Sappho seems to hold nothing back; Catullus
and Ovid seem adept at revealing themselves; Petrarch
and D ante confess their personal faults and obsessions.
Moreover, even those who are ordinarily more reserved
can flash forth at crucial moments. M any readers cher
ish the passages in Paradise L ost when Joh n M ilton, in
the first person, thrusts his own struggles and feelings
into the story.
It is tempting to view such disclosures as a trans
parent kind o f autobiography, encompassing not only
the situation o f the poet but his or her inner life. Yet
the image o f the poet within the poem, like a painters
self-portrait, reveals only as much as will serve an artis
tic effect. Q uite often a glimpse o f the person behind
the lines may function to tease or intrigue the reader,
provoking a curiosity forever invited and yet evaded.
T. S. Eliot, for instance, mastered that art, despite his
advocacy o f impersonality. Good craftsmen know
what to withhold as well as what to divulge. These
strategies can be very complex. Hence, self-portraits
o f poets cover a wide range o f forms and purposes,
from Li Ching-chaos tzu to Allen Ginsbergs H owl.
In the Japanese genre o f the poetic diary (uta n ikki)
(see Japanese p o e tic d ia ries), prose and verse combine
in a personal journal enriched by an anthol. o f poems.
Thus, M atsuo Bashos N arrow R o a d to the Interior (1689)
offers a travelogue sprinkled with haiku in which exqui
site descriptions o f nature convey the inner landscape
o f the poet. The diary documents spontaneous impres
sions o f a historical journey into perilous regions. Yet it
was carefully revised to accommodate both the facts and
the person to a series o f moods woven together, as if the
writer him self were a work o f art. O ther poetic genres
also insinuate that they are revealing the private life
o f the poet. The 'sonn et sequences o f Petrarch, Pierre
de Ronsard, and Shakespeare, e.g., have often been
com bed like diaries for evidence o f whom and how the
poet loved. But such evidence is untrustworthy at best.
The sonnets o f Louise Labe offer a famous, searing case
hist. o f a passionate woman in love; but lately some
scholars have argued that Labe never existed and that
a group o f men concocted those sonnets. W hatever the
truth may be, it cannot be determined solely by the tes
tim ony o f the poems, whose personal voice often echoes
the voices o f many earlier works. In this way, the poet
seems constructed or pieced together from expectations
about what a poet should be.
Thiose expectations also keep changing over tim e.
Perhaps, in the distant past, poets knew just what
societies wanted from them . The shaman, the 'b ard ,
the court poet all were rewarded for doing their duty,
whether as oracles, entertainers, or eulogists o f their
patrons. Even in those days, they tended to com plain
about the difficulty o f making verses to make a living.
Yet their way o f life was accepted. In some societies,
everyone recognized the value o f poetry, which seemed
as indispensable as breathing. D uring m ost o f Chinese
hist., from the earliest emperors until the era o f M ao
Zedong, all educated people could and did write verse,
catching fleeting em otions or memorializing special
occasions. The practice was so fam iliar that Chinese
has no word that designates the poet, although great
writers like Li Po and Tu Fu were honored as masters
or teachers. In lesser hands, a skillful piece o f verse
m ight function to impress superiors or advance a ca
reer; a courtier who could not ask a favor from the em
peror directly could appeal to him with a poem . But
in m ost mod. societies, poets can seldom rely on being
valued or noticed. Since the rise o f print culture and
the decline o f 'patronage, they have largely depended
on selling their wares to the public, and very few have
found that profitable. N o r does poetry seem quite re
spectable as a profession or job description. The vast
m ajority o f poets earn their keep by doing other kinds
o f work, m ost often (in the U .S.) by teaching. There
is little agreement, moreover, about what they co n
tribute to society or about what society owes them .
Poets and lovers o f poetry continue to feel that poems
provide som ething essential, whether by revitalizing

lang., by noticing things that daily routines pass over,
or by rem inding readers o f what it means to be alive.
B ut m uch o f the public seems content with a world in
which the poet has no place at all.
Thie lack o f any well-defined social role m ight be
regarded, even so, as a peculiar advantage. I f poets
are outsiders, they are free to examine and challenge
all the assumptions that other people usually take for
granted. O ne model o f the poet was put forward in
the 15th c. by Frangois V illon, whose popular bal
lads traded on his exploits as a ruffian and thief. Four
centuries later Charles Baudelaire explored the cre
ative possibilities o f evil, Paul Verlaine and Arthur
Rim baud devoted themselves to breaking rules and
laws in poems, and O scar W ilde linked criminals and
poets an association that rappers and other perform
ing rebels still make the most of. But the freedom o f
poets from social constraints and conventions can
also inspire a more positive mission, a resistance to
the em pty formulas o f those in power. W hen others
are afraid to speak, the poet sometimes bears a special
burden. In the form er Soviet Union, when the gov
ernm ent brooked no opposition and suppressed any
unauthorized publication Poets, we are and that
rhymes with pariahs, M arina Tsvetaeva wrote in
Poets a small core o f outcast writers, whose poems
circulated in secret or by word o f m outh, seemed to
represent the conscience o f the nation. Osip M andel
stam paid with his life for anti-Soviet verse, and Anna
Akhmatova bore witness to the suffering o f her people.
Such poetry broke a terrible silence; many readers
knew those poems by heart. And poets have seldom
been more revered. (In the relative freedom o f Russia
today, some writers com plain, poetry matters less.) Yet
the mandate to serve as w atchm an and witness has not
lost its force. Am id the troubles o f times and places
where free speech is throttled, dissident poets around
the world have managed to defy authority and scorn
injustice. That social or antisocial role has honored the
name o f the poet.
Yet most countries tolerate poets. Insofar as the
mod. poet does have a voice, it tends to be the still,
small voice that lingers in the m ind when someone has
turned o ff the busy hum o f mass-market diversions.
A memorable phrase or two the still small voice,
the busy hum can alter perceptions. Hence, poets
take on the special task o f ministering to lang., refin
ing its rhythms, preserving or transform ing its stock o f
words and expressions. Ever since Stephane Mallarme,
some theorists have claimed that the poet is foremost
a maker o f lang., giving a purer sense to the words
o f the tribe (The Tom b o f Edgar Poe). The power
o f poetic lang. to mold ideas, or even to inspire fresh
ways o f thinking, had earlier moved P. B. Shelley to
declare that poets are the unacknowledged legislators
o f the W orld; they create the words and ideals that
will govern the future. Lately, more skeptical theorists
have sometimes reduced the poet to a captive or special
effect o f lang., a medium in which all hum an beings are
submerged and that dissolves any illusion o f a unique
personality. Yet somehow that special effect o f lang. has
PO ET ES S 1051
survived long after the tongues that first gave rise to it
have passed away. The maker o f golden worlds and the
maker o f poems still represent the possibility o f mak
ing something new. The poet, as R . W. Em erson said,
is the Namer, or Language-maker who converts the
world into words, and that process links the distant
past to those who make poems today.
See in flu e n c e , o r ig in a lity , p o ete m audit, poetess.
I Curtius; T. S. Eliot, On Poetry a n d Poets (1957);
W. H . Auden, The Dyer's H a n d (1962); Jap an ese
P oetic D iaries, trans. E. M iner (1969); W. J . Bate,
The B urden o f the P ast a n d the English P oet (1970);
M . Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, trans.
A. Hofstadter (1971); M . Foucault, Language, Counter
M emory, Practice, trans. D . F. Bouchard and S. Sim on
(1977); R. Hingley, N ightingale Fever: Russian Poets
in Revolution (1981); L. Lipking, The L ife o f the P oet
(1981); R. Helgerson, S elf-C row n ed Laureates (1983); R.
Alter, The A rt o f B ib lic a l Poetry (1985); M . W. B loom
field and C . W. D unn, The Role o f the P oet in Early Soci
eties (1989); C . Bernstein, A Poetics (1992); C . Watkins,
H ow to K ill a D ragon: Aspects o f Indo-E u ropean Poetics
(1995); P. Bourdieu, The Rules o f Art, trans. S. Emanuel
(1996); J . Brockington, The Sanskrit Epics (1998); J .
Black, R eadin g Sum erian Poetry (1998); A. Hiltebeitel,
R ethin kin g the M a h a b h a ra ta (2001); M . H uchon, L o u
ise L a b e (2 0 0 6 ); G . M . Sanders, Words Well P ut: Visions
o f P oetic Com petence in the Chinese Tradition (2 0 0 6 );
A. R . Ascoli, D an te a n d the M akin g o f a M odern A u thor
(2 0 0 8 ); J . Ramazani, A T ransnational Poetics (2 0 0 9 ).
L. L ipk in g
P O E T E M A U D IT. A p h rase that reflects the w iden
ing g u lf in 19th-c. France betw een the gifted poet
and the public on w hom his survival m ight de
pend. It was given currency by Paul Verlaines Les
Poetes m au dits (1884), a co llection o f essays on poets
hardly know n at the tim e, such as Tristan Corbiere,
A rthur Rim baud, and Stephane M allarm e. A h alf
century earlier, A lfred de V ignys Stello (1832) had
developed, in successive tales about N icolas-Joseph
G ilb ert, Thom as C h atterto n , and Andre Chenier,
the idea that poets (the race forever accursed [m au -
d ite ] by those w ho have power on earth) are envied
and hated fo r their superior qualities by society and
its rulers who fear the truths they tell. Thereafter, a
sick, impoverished, or dissolute poet o f significant
but generally unrecognized talent cam e to be seen
in these terms as doubly victim ized by a hostile and
insentient society.
I F. F. Burch, Paul Verlaines Les Poetes Maudits:
The D ating o f the Essays and Origin o f the T itle,
M L N 76 (1961); M . Perloff, Poetes M au dits o f the
Genteel Tradition: Lowell and Berryman, R obert L ow
ell, ed. S. G . Axelrod and H . Deese (1986).
A. G . E n g stro m
P O E T E S S . The Poetess is a generic figure with a long
and various hist., often connected to popular poetry
with broad national and international circulation and
reaching its height in the 19th-c. verse culture o f E u