Emerson: "I love him, even when I disagree with him." --Dr. Powers

Emerson was a Platonist...or so go his musical prose. He was a Platonist because he wrote, "poetry was all written before time was," (p. 726), and "poems are a corrupt version of some text in nature with which they ought to be made to tally" (p. 732). He writes that poets "miswrite" them, suggesting the Platonic idea that there is somehow a perfect version of that poem, an ideal poem that lies out there that must be pursued (poets, therefore, are pursuers of that perfection).

So, of course I'm no Platonist. But I will sympathize with Emerson if he makes this claim simply for the difficulty of the poet to create the perfect piece. Because I'm sure all of us can attest to the anger and actual, physical pain that happens in the brain when we just can't find the right words. Richard Brown puts it perfectly in the film The Hours (directed by Stephan Daldry):

"I wanted to be a writer, that's all. I wanted to write about it all. Everything that happens in a moment. The way the flowers looked when you carried them in your arms. This towel, how it smells, how it feels, this thread. All our feelings, yours and mine. The history of it, who we once were. Everything in the world. Everything all mixed up, like it's all mixed up now. And I failed. I failed. No matter what you start with it ends up being so much less. Sheer f***ing pride and stupidity."

As much as I disagree with Emerson's definitions and statements (I don't, for example, believe that a poet necessarily has to say what has not yet been foretold, p. 726), I completely agree with the principle that poets never get it right, that they are always missing something. (I can say this...because I'm a poet.) I can see Emerson working out in his head right now, starting from that fundamental point of poetic flaw: "we never get it right...but there has to be a right because there is something that we are pursuing...we are therefore pursuing the unknown...poets are prophets trying to happen."

Yes, Emerson. Poets are nothing if not pursuers (but are not all craftsmen pursuing the perfection of their craft?).