"Poetry is that art which selects and arranges the symbols of thought in such a manner as to excite the imagination the most powerfully and delightfully"
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Bryant’s definition of poetry is a small manifesto disguised as craft advice: poetry isn’t the raw dumping of feeling, it’s the deliberate engineering of wonder. The key verbs are “selects and arranges.” He frames the poet less as a confessor than as an editor with taste, someone who curates “symbols of thought” and sets them in an order that can do work on the reader’s mind. That’s a quietly bracing stance for a 19th-century poet often associated with nature and moral seriousness. He’s insisting that imagination isn’t an accident of inspiration; it’s an effect you build.
The subtext is a defense of poetry’s legitimacy in a culture that was increasingly practical, industrial, and suspicious of ornament. By calling poetry an “art” and measuring it by how “powerfully and delightfully” it excites imagination, Bryant draws a line: the point is not instruction alone, nor argument, nor mere prettiness, but a heightened cognitive experience. “Symbols” matters, too. He’s not saying poetry invents thoughts; it manipulates the signs we already use to think - images, metaphors, rhythms - to make the familiar feel newly charged.
Contextually, Bryant sits at the American Romantic hinge: a nation building its institutions while also trying to build a literature. This definition reads like a bid for professional dignity. The poet’s job, Bryant implies, is to turn thinking into sensation without abandoning intelligence - a pleasing provocation in an era that liked its art either uplifting or useful.
The subtext is a defense of poetry’s legitimacy in a culture that was increasingly practical, industrial, and suspicious of ornament. By calling poetry an “art” and measuring it by how “powerfully and delightfully” it excites imagination, Bryant draws a line: the point is not instruction alone, nor argument, nor mere prettiness, but a heightened cognitive experience. “Symbols” matters, too. He’s not saying poetry invents thoughts; it manipulates the signs we already use to think - images, metaphors, rhythms - to make the familiar feel newly charged.
Contextually, Bryant sits at the American Romantic hinge: a nation building its institutions while also trying to build a literature. This definition reads like a bid for professional dignity. The poet’s job, Bryant implies, is to turn thinking into sensation without abandoning intelligence - a pleasing provocation in an era that liked its art either uplifting or useful.
Quote Details
| Topic | Poetry |
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