Heaney’s Redress riffs off Hazlitt’s On Poetry in General. Here’s what William has to say “…for the end and use of poetry ‘both at the first and now, was and is to hold the mirror up to nature,’ seen through the medium of passion and imagination, not divested of that medium by means of literal truth or abstract reason….the impressions of common sense and strong imagination, that is, of passion and indifference, cannot be the same, and they must have a separate language to do justice to either.”

Here’s a recent article on what’s happening with the Sony reader

Very good post by literary tradesman rob maclennan here discussing the usefulness of poetry, women and the writing life (note that there is a comma between poetry and women). Several days ago I re-read Seamus Heaney‘s Oxford Lecture The Redress of Poetry. Here’s what Seamus said about ‘usefulness’

“…Yet Plato’s world of ideal forms also provides the court of appeal through which poetic imagination seeks to redress whatever is wrong or exacerbating in the prevailing conditions. Moreover, ‘useful’ or ‘practical’ responses to those same conditions are derived from imagined standards too: poetic fictions, the dream of alternative worlds, enable governments and revolutionaries as well.”

The reason I decided to read rob’s post was his mention early on of Basil Bunting [I have an edition of his Collected Poems with dust jacket (B&W version of Voice of Fire) designed by Barnett Newman]…who’s always worth the read. Try The Well of Lycopolis for a start.