The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism

A slow reread is so rewarding. Most of what he says about poetry can be said for fiction. Eliot refuses to form a theory of poetry, or to define it. Instead, he talks about the experience of poetry, and about how difficult it is to pin down the poem that is perceived somewhere between poet and reader.

He speaks about how Shelley is the poet of adolescents; how Keats exhibits his genius more through his letters than through his poetry, which was just beginning to mature before he died; he talks about the problems of modern views of poetry…”