Emerson Characterizes a True Poet

Emerson Characterizes a True Poet

We live in world today where people claim to be songwriters, musicians, artists, and even poets. These people say they are because they feel they have a gift or a special talent. They try to use their talent to make money and never once stop and do it to feed their soul or look at it for the beauty of the piece. Emerson says to be a true poet one must have these qualities: the sayer, the namer and represents beauty (1648). If you try to write putting yourself in the view of Emersonís The Poet then you too will become a great writer or poet.

First we should look at the quality of the sayer. Basically all it is, is that you announce that which no man foretold. He is the true and only doctor; he knows and tells; he is the only teller of news. He is the beholder of the ideas...(1648-49). Emerson claims all poetry was written before time and that the true poet, when he writes, listens to the region where air is music and you hear whispers of poetry and the poet begins to write. The true poet will write it down accurately and with a delicate ear.

The world we live in is such a work of art and its much a privilege to be living here. A poet can just go outside and write about the beauty he sees before him. There is so much one can write. One could write about life experiences, or one could just write about nature and its splendor. Emerson says that nature is like a picture-language and nature is expressed through images or symbols..nature is a symbol in the whole and every part. Every line we draw in the sand has expression and there is no body without its spirit or genious (1650). Emerson basically looks at everything in this world as a symbol because each image has so many different interpretations and ways to express it. Beauty is much in the eye of the beholder and how we express a particular item is up to the person and everyoneís expression would different. Thatís what makes poetry so great.

The Poet is also the namer, or language maker, naming things sometimes after their appearance or essence and giving to every one its own name (1653).