Understanding Poetry

Because poetry--like all the arts--involves this kind of experiential knowledge, we miss the value of poetry if we think of its characteristic knowledge as consisting of "messages," statements, snippets of doctrine. The knowledge that poetry yields is available to us only if we submit ourselves to the massive, and subtle, impact of the poem as a whole. We have access to this special kind of knowledge only by participating in the drama of the poem, apprehending the form of the poem. What in this context do we mean by form? To create a form is to find a way to contemplate, and perhaps to comprehend, our human urgencies. Form is the recognition of fate made joyful, because made comprehensible.


Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren,
Understanding Poetry,
1960