The Making of Poetry A Critical Study of Its Nature and Value 803 By Arthur H. R. Fairchild, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of English, University of Missouri G. P. Putnam's Sons PREFACE THIS book might be called a critical essay toward a consistent view of poetry. I claim no finality for this view. I only hope that it will be of some real service to teachers and students whose interests and activities centre in literature; to the gentle-hearted reader whose mind, untouched by the sneaping frost of complacency, is eager to find the well-springs of his higher pleasures; to the man of affairs, professedly literary in taste or not, whose purged vision enables him to recognise in poetry the highest manifestation of principles that control all his best practical attainments. If this critical study, by its nature as inadequate to its purpose as it is imperfect in achievement, will help to show a little more clearly how poetry is made, what its nature is, what the need and value of it are in our daily life, so that poetry may be more widely seen as touching "this uneasy heart of ours" with "morning radiance"; if it will help to reconcile conceptions commonly thought of as remotely idealistic with those dominant in activities all about us; if, even by implication, it will in some measure suggest the final dependence of our civilisation upon our esteem and cultivation of the higher ranges of 239070 |
