A Concise Treasury of Great Poems English and American - From the Foundations of the English Spirit to the Outstanding Poetry of Our Own Time; With Lives of the Poets and Historical Settings Selected and Integrated #231301

If poetry is the most potent of human communications, it should also be the simplest and the most logical expression. It should, some say, require no particular cogitation, no after thoughts, no exercise of the speculative mind. But poetry, being the product of intuition as well as experience, transcends plain statements; it surpasses fact and leaps ahead of logic. Simple arithmetic to the contrary, a poem is not the sum of its parts. A poem is greater than its parts; it is even something beyond its parts. It is prompted by an idea, enhanced by rhyme, pointed by meter, colored by metaphor. This fusion, this enrichment and intensification, has created a new thing: the poem itself, which is beyond analysis — even, at times, beyond logic.