Do you have a philosophy of poetics? I think every poet should think through his or her philosophy of poetics – what you think poetry should be. It doesn’t have to be an elaborate definition. It should be something that defines what you believe poetry should be.
Your philosophy of poetics could be something as simple as “poetry should reflect honest feelings about the world” to something a bit more complex, such as “poetry must show the world in all its complexities while using the vast tools and techniques all poets have used throughout history, but the best poetry is unrhymed and speaks from the heart, though rhyme does have its place as long as it isn’t trite and overused.”
You don’t have to go so far as to give your poetic philosophy a name. It’s fine if you do, but you don’t have to. I have given my philosophy of poetics a name. I call it the School of Millennialism. Like many poetic schools, Millennialism is defined by its philosophy. Romanticism, for instance, was a movement that occurred during the mid-eighteenth century and involved heightened emotion and devotion to nature. The Romantic poets are as varied as the schools of thought within the movement itself, including atheist Percy Bysshe Shelley, religious devotee Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and mystic poet William Blake.
Millennialism, a school of poetic philosophy based partly on my own admiration of the Romantics expands upon their philosophy. I do not consider hyper emotive forms of expression to be the defining element in Milliennialism, but I do consider it worthy of consideration. The Millennial School of Poetry is best defined as a fusion of every school of poetic thought that comes before, relying upon no tool or technique more than any other but allowing for the use of all as valid within the forms that poets use. In other words, we do not reject any school of poetics on any basis but embrace them all as possible within any single poem, the poet’s choice of course.
That is my philosophy of poetics. Everything is welcome, nothing is denied. Do you have a philosophy? How do you see poetry? What is it? What is allowed? What is not allowed? How would you define it?
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