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Literature & Poetry

Aesthetic Realism as Poetry

This issue of TRO reprints Eli Siegel’s Statement with Comments, “Poetry Is the Making One of Opposites.” This is the text for the course The Aesthetic Realism Explanation of Poetry, taught by Ellen Reiss

The Shakespearean Awareness

“Shakespeare says much of fear, anger, contempt. Some of the highest points in the world’s literature have Shakespeare’s awareness of these three emotions….”

The Hawthorne Omission

“I shall give evidence that Nathaniel Hawthorne knew he was driven by a deep contempt; and he also knew that he might die of it….”

Missed by Edgar Allan Poe

“Edgar Allan Poe felt that he had put aside good will in his life; and that for the rest of his years, he was hoping to have it back. It is good will, essentially, who is or which is missed in his poems like ‘Ulalume’ or ‘The Raven’….”

America Has Literature

“The first American novel that impressed Europe was The Spy of 1821 by James Fenimore Cooper….[He] had one of the greatest imaginations the world has seen…..”

Essays and Lectures

  • The Immediate Need for Poetry
  • Poetry Is the Making One of Opposites
  • Historic talk on William Carlos Williams’ poetry
  • Poetry and History
  • Poetry and Keenness
  • Poetry and Women
  • Romanticism and Guilt
  • It Still Moves; or, The Novel

Further Reading

Aristotle & Our Own Lives
Issue #2133, April 10, 2024
The World’s Opposites—in Books & Us
Issue #2132, March 27, 2024
A Person, and the Wide World
Issue #2131, March 13, 2024
How Do We Want to See?
Issue #2130, February 28, 2024
The Novel, Poetry, & Our Lives Now
Issue #2124, December 6, 2023
What Impels?
Issue #2123, November 22, 2023
Homer—& What Can End War
Issue #2122, November 8, 2023
What Our Minds Are For
Issue #2121, October 25, 2023
This, Too, Comprehended at Last
Issue #2120, October 11, 2023
Poetry, Ourselves, & What Reality Has
Issue #2115, August 2, 2023
Can Incongruity Be Seen Beautifully? Yes.
Issue #2114, July 19, 2023
Abandon—Good and Bad
Issue #2112, June 21, 2023
Value, Criticism, & Ourselves
Issue #2111, June 7, 2023
An Inseparable Fighting-and-Love
Issue #2110, May 24, 2023
The Drama in Objects
Issue #2109, May 10, 2023
“The Art of Responding to Value”
Issue #2108, April 26, 2023
The Criticism of Poetry & Life
Issue #2106, March 29, 2023
The Sincerity We Need
Issue #2105, March 15, 2023
Poetry’s Opposites—& Ours
Issue #2102, February 1, 2023
What Poetry Really Is—& Your Own Hopes
Issue #2101, January 18, 2023
Love, Poetry, & Value
Issue #2100, January 4, 2023
A World That Has Meaning!
Issue #2099, December 21, 2022
How Much Value?
Issue #2098, December 7, 2022
Love, Knowing, & Values
Issue #2097, November 23, 2022
Fact, Value—& Our Own Emotions
Issue #2096, November 9, 2022
Emphasis, Art, & Ourselves
Issue #2094, October 12, 2022
Knowledge—Excited and True
Issue #2092, September 14, 2022
Novels, Justice, & Emphasis
Issue #2091, August 31, 2022
Emphasis & the Human Hope
Issue #2090, August 17, 2022
Contempt and Beauty
Issue #2089, August 3, 2022
Contempt—How Should We See It?
Issue #2087, July 6, 2022
The Understanding of Anger & Contempt
Issue #2086, June 22, 2022
A “Loving Conquest of Reality”
Issue #2083, May 11, 2022
Criticism, Kindness, Love—What’s the Relation?
Issue #2081, April 13, 2022
Sentences, Beauty, & the Biggest Fight
Issue #2080, March 30, 2022
The Beauty of Sentences versus Contempt
Issue #2079, March 16, 2022
Sentences—& Our Lives Right Now!
Issue #2078, March 2, 2022
Emotion & Sentences
Issue #2077, February 16, 2022
What Kind of Emotion?
Issue #2076, February 2, 2022
Freedom & Our Purposes
Issue #2075, January 19, 2022
What All Art Has—& Our Everyday Lives
Issue #2074, January 5, 2022
Keats, Beauty, & Ourselves
Issue #2068, October 13, 2021
Freedom & Justice: Aesthetic Opposites
Issue #2067, September 29, 2021
The Self—Always and Now
Issue #2062, July 21, 2021
A Literary Device—& Everyone’s Own Self
Issue #2061, July 7, 2021
The Self—of Any Age & Time
Issue #2059, June 9, 2021
The Self—Its Purpose & Its Mistake
Issue #2058, May 26, 2021
What the Self Is—Including One’s Own
Issue #2057, May 12, 2021
Truth & Beauty Go On
Issue #2045, November 25, 2020
In Life & Art—How Do We Imagine?
Issue #2043, October 28, 2020
Beauty, the Opposites, & What America Needs
Issue #2038, August 19, 2020
For Our Time: Six Poems by Eli Siegel
Issue #2030, April 29, 2020
Now & Always—How Should We See the World?
Issue #2029, April 15, 2020
A Woman, Literature, & Instinct
Issue #2027, March 18, 2020
Art & What People Deserve
Issue #2025, February 19, 2020
About Poetry & Our Own Happiness
Issue #2000, March 6, 2019
The Human Self—at Any Age
Issue #1992, November 14, 2018
The Grandeur of Knowing—versus Contempt
Issue #1990, October 17, 2018
The Novel—What It Tells Us
Issue #1987, September 5, 2018
Justice to Feelings—& the Novel
Issue #1986, August 22, 2018
People in Novels—& Us
Issue #1985, August 8, 2018
Ourselves—& What’s Around Us
Issue #1984, July 25, 2018
What Is Meaning—in Art & Our Lives?
Issue #1983, July 11, 2018
Brightness—in the World & Our Thoughts
Issue #1981, June 13, 2018
Brightness, Dimness, & People’s Hopes
Issue #1979, May 16, 2018
The Deepest Kind of Cleverness
Issue #1978, May 2, 2018
The Self: Clever, Deep, & Confused
Issue #1976, April 4, 2018
Love, Art, & Cleverness
Issue #1975, March 21, 2018
Cleverness, Beauty, & Contempt
Issue #1974, March 7, 2018
We Have to Learn What Expression Is
Issue #1973, February 21, 2018
Space, Matter, Good Will, & the Whale
Issue #1970, January 10, 2018
Space, Matter, & Our Own Emotions
Issue #1969, December 27, 2017
About Books and Marriage
Issue #1956, June 28, 2017
Beauty & Dissatisfaction
Issue #1922, March 9, 2016
Poetry, Love, & Dissatisfaction
Issue #1920, February 10, 2016
Love—& the Mistake
Issue #1919, January 27, 2016
Love & the Philosophic Opposites
Issue #1918, January 13, 2016
Love: Two People & the World Itself
Issue #1917, December 30, 2015
Love—& How We Talk to Each Other
Issue #1916, December 16, 2015
What Marriage Is Really For
Issue #1915, December 2, 2015
Always with Us: Lightness & Weight
Issue #1914, November 18, 2015
How Alive?
Issue #1913, November 4, 2015
The History of Feelings
Issue #1912, October 21, 2015
Our Selves & Ernest Hemingway
Issue #1906, July 29, 2015
Day & Night, Awake & Asleep—We Are Related
Issue #1904, July 1, 2015
Relation: The Most Important Subject
Issue #1903, June 17, 2015
How We See Relation
Issue #1902, June 3, 2015
Literature, the World, & Aesthetic Realism
Issue #1885, October 8, 2014
Wordsworth—& the Fight in Everyone
Issue #1860, October 23, 2013
A Magnificent Self-Dissatisfaction
Issue #1855, August 14, 2013
There Are Babies, Art, & Ourselves
Issue #1848, May 8, 2013
Do We Like the Way Our Minds Work?
Issue #1841, January 30, 2013
Shelley and Love
Issue #1840, January 16, 2013
Instinct, Logic, & Love
Issue #1833, October 10, 2012
Philosophy—& Our Opinion of Ourselves
Issue #1829, August 15, 2012
New York, Love, & Poetry
Issue #1819, March 28, 2012
Your Self: A Philosophic Drama
Issue #1774, July 7, 2010
Shelley—& What Nations & People Want
Issue #1671, July 26, 2006
Always: Love of Reality
Issue #1626, November 3, 2004
Justice and Punctuation
Issue #1616, June 16, 2004
Poetry, Self, and Love
Issue #1605, January 14, 2004
Energy, Poetry, & Mistakes about Love
Issue #1427, August 9, 2000
Poetry—& How People Affect People
Issue #1411, April 19, 2000
True Excitement vs. Competition
Issue #1379, September 8, 1999
The Sanity of Poetry; or, H.D.
Issue #1316, June 24, 1998
Poetry, Domesticity, Love
Issue #1305, April 8, 1998
Books and Aesthetic Realism
Issue #821, December 28, 1988
Poetry and Ourselves: Truly
Issue #758, October 14, 1987
The Answer Is Poetry
Issue #623, March 13, 1985
All the Arts
Issue #212, April 20, 1977
The Two Pleasures
Issue #162, May 5, 1976
The Common Destruction
Issue #161, April 28, 1976
The Suppression of Good Will
Issue #160, April 21, 1976
Ah, To Dismiss
Issue #159, April 14, 1976
Missed by Edgar Allan Poe
Issue #158, April 7, 1976
The Hawthorne Omission
Issue #157, March 31, 1976
The Shakespearean Awareness
Issue #156, March 24, 1976
Recapitulation
Issue #152, February 25, 1976
What Opposes Love?
Issue #150, February 11, 1976

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