Poetry and the Idea

Does poetry relate to the idea?  Yes, as far as the idea is force all poetry, and always, relates to it, as speaking out is a force and, like ideas, is effective in the world around it, the world of forces.  What the idea is besides this force, or as this force, is of course countless things, since we already imagine force in terms of degree, in terms of more or less.  There is more or less force in poems, more or less of the thrust with which it began, or that it finds in the middle or at the end.  There is more or less, too, of a certain affirmation, and this is what we most look for in poems in anything approaching a grand style: affirmation of the position of one thing to another, affirmation of the human scenario and the more than human and less than human scenario, affirmation of being a speaker, one who says a great deal and for who knows whom, affirmation of being–a poet!  So the idea we are searching for here is, among the thick of the psyche, the thick of environment or as this thick, making entrance, appearing in a particular way, the idea as it relates to totally affirming, or not, things as they are, as they are found in the thick amidst all the tricks of language and bending, indecisive thought.  Whether we want to speak to things, at times for things when that happens to be their line of flight, through things and about things at all, or not, that is the idea.

Art affirms. Even Job affirms.

Nietzsche