Praxis of the Theory of Poetry as Philosophy

Indianapolis, IN

An analytic framework which regards Wallace Stevens, American early modernist poet, and Martin Heidegger, 20th century German philosopher, and their thoughts on poetry reveals that the act of poetizing can be the act of philosophizing. It is the aim of this thesis to employ such a framework, referred to as the HS lens, on many different poems and identify those poems’ philosophic qualities. By applying a theory of poetry as philosophy on a wide range of poems, it is revealed that the specific goal of a philosophic poem is to reveal things in their true essences, a process which Heidegger variously refers to as unconcealment, the originary sway of truth, unhiddenness, manifestness, etc. This is done in the poem through imaginative, figurative, vibrant language that is rooted in the image and the immediacy of the things being depicted. Because this thesis considers an array of poetic forms, genres, time periods, authors, styles and theoretic frameworks, the HS lens is built solely out of an analysis of the texts themselves. Therefore, styles which may have been developed after Stevens’ and Heideggers’ time can be analyzed through this framework. Poems which are written in different languages and countries can be analyzed. Although not every poem can be definitively determined as acts of philosophy, many poems can at least be considered through the HS lens, and the lens itself is widened by many different types of poems. The goal remains to identify the process of unconcealment through figurative language inherent in the poem. English Literature & Creative Writing