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31 May 2005: I was thinking about the poem I had in the previous entry because there was a thread at New-Poetry discussing poetry's utility in which some people argued that it was useful because it slowed people down--out of the hectic rat race life too often is, I presume. I got confused (perhaps because of all my recent driving). I thought providing silence was what its main use was supposed to be. Hence, my remembering the poem of yesterday.
Meanwhile, I went over why I consider poetry of value, and it has little to do with utility. I believe the function of all art is simply to provide direct pleasure, nothing else. Philistines can't accept this. But what higher value exists than pleasure? Don't say "meaningfulness," for that is no more than a form of pleasure. The specific function of poetry is to provide verbal pleasure--mainly, I've said, through the appropriate misuse of words.
I speak of "direct pleasure" because I believe that the function of everything we do is to provide pleasure.
Instruction is for essayists, not poets. Alexander Pope thus was not, for me, a poet when He wrote his "Essay on Criticism." He was a writer of verse informrature. Which he did brilliantly.
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