Modern poets differ from the Elizabethans in this. Each of the moderns like an Elector of Hanover governs his own petty state, & knows how many straws are swept daily from the Causeways in all his dominions & has a continual itching that all the Housewives should have their coppers well scoured: the ancients were Emperors of vast povinces, they had only heard of the remote ones and scarcely cared to visit them—I will cut all this—I will have no more of Wordsworth or Hunt…In my own experience, poetry continues to have this problem of pettiness to which I feel compelled to warn budding poets. To some, contemporary poetry is a writing cult guarded by peevish word commissars who can know everything about art and nothing about the spirit; and should they encounter it in another’s poem are apt to feel threatened and can become livid and pick apart such a poem intent to suppress the spirit of both poet and poem.
Part of the problem, as I see it, is because of this socialization into individual consciousness, our art becomes overly tied to our individual sense of self. Wordsworth snubbed Keats who in turn snubbed Wordsworth; yet both were poetic geniuses in their own right but overprotective of their sense of self as it became tied to their art. As the Elizabethans and the ancient Greeks composed their poetry at a surging tide of the human spirit, they were less likely to get bogged down in matters no one much cares about outside the realm of poetry.
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