Poetry And Philosophy
I am reading a collection of essays by Wallace Stevens, a poet of the 20th century. His insights into what words do for us “knocks me out.” I think these few lines written about poetry suggest the relationship between poetry and philosophy. The promise of reason is that we may clarify what must be so, if we are patient and do not lose faith in our goal. Reason and poetry is an refutation of the “might makes right” notion that is loose in our own country at this time, and in many other places in our world.
Poetry
is the belief of credible people
in credible things.
It follows
that poetic truth
is the truth of credible things,
not so much that it is actually so,
as that it must be so.
— excerpt essay The Figure of the Youth as Virile Poet, p. 53
from The Necessary Angel by Wallace Stevens.
