Poetry allows a writer to express thoughts and/or feelings that are otherwise inexpressible.

This is usually the one aspect of poetry that everyone, including people who have never read it, already know about poetry.

This is because our image or stereotype of “the poet” is this incredibly emotional and romantic (not as in “love” but as in a deep enthusiasm that cannot be explained) person just spilling with the need and desire to “express” themselves.

We actually get this stereotype of “the poet” from the romantic era (1815-1848).

Percy Shelly (1792-1822) is probably the quintessential

stereotype of a poet. His poem, “Ode to the West

Wind” is a perfect example of “the poet” overflowing with

romantic desire to express his feelings (pay particular

attention to the end of the fourth stanza – a stanza is a group of lines in a poem):

IV

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;

 

  If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;  

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share   45

   The impulse of thy strength, only less free  

Than thou, O uncontrollable! if even  

  I were as in my boyhood, and could be  

 The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,  

  As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed   50

Scarce seem'd a vision—I would ne'er have striven

 

   As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.

 

O! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!  

  I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!  

 A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd

  55

One too like thee—tameless, and swift, and proud.

 

 

In this poem, Shelley is begging the West Wind (the beginning, for him, of all movement and life) to give him inspiration, voice, and life for his poetry. In the line, “I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!” Shelley is lamenting his deep need for the west wind to lift him up. Even the exclamation points in this line are melodramatic. You can almost see the poet writhing around, with his head thrown back, and the back of his hand over his forehead as if saying, “oh, woe is me!”

NOTE:

None of this is to say that Percy Shelley was not an absolutely beautiful poet because he was. “Ode to the West Wind” is one of the most important

poems written in the English language, from some perspectives.

However, once you understand the melodrama and overflowing of emotion that came out of the romantic era, it is easy to see where our stereotype of

“the poet” comes from.

Nevertheless, poetry IS indeed, in part, about expressing feelings.