Conclusion

Having started with grand claims for poetry, by Shelley, Wallace Stevens, and others, on grounds of public utility, this brief consideration of what poetry is has encountered a series of recurrent features. Its primary effect seems to be to satisfy what the reader or hearer wants by surprising them in some way. It is never the statement of the obvious. It may be abnormal in language or in opinion or in organization. But it must not be abnormal for the sake of it; it must not be perverse, because its endeavour is to expose the truth in some sense that is not obvious. It works in the service of reality. It is in that sense that it is an enhancement of life as we end where we began....