Abstract

The Philosophy of Poetry. “Of” intimates something more than copular coexistence. This could be the systematic and propositional attempt to define what poetry is, subjecting poetry to philosophical investigation with its distinctive questions and processes of inquiry. As a literary critic, however, I heard the title The Philosophy of Poetry as an assertion of poetry’s discursive, cognitive value: it suggests there are varieties of philosophic thought, of which one might be the poetic organization of understanding. Between these inversions there are less exclusive ways of imagining the relationship. The philosophy of poetry could be the attitude it assumes toward the world—its disinterested...