"The job of the poet is to render the world - to see it and report it without loss, without perversion. No poet ever talks about feelings. Only sentimental people do"

Mark Van Doren’s statement elevates the poet’s role to that of a precise observer, a faithful scribe entrusted with the task of capturing reality as it is, untouched by distortion or personal agenda. He emphasizes the poet’s responsibility to “render the world”, not merely to express emotions or moralize, but to see with clarity and to describe with honesty. For Van Doren, poetry is a form of artistic reportage; its authority and beauty spring from direct, undistorted engagement with the actual world. The poet’s sensitivity and vision are valuable only insofar as they help transmit the essence of things, so no detail or nuance is lost along the way.

Van Doren’s assertion that “no poet ever talks about feelings” runs counter to the popular assumption of poetry as a medium for emotive confession. Here, he draws a sharp line between poetry and sentimentality. While sentimental people indulge in the act of verbalizing their feelings, poets, he suggests, approach their subject matter with a much more rigorous discipline. Instead of airing inner emotions directly, the poet shapes language in such a way that the world itself is unveiled, evoking feeling in the reader not through explicit statement but through the vividness, fidelity, and precision of their rendering. Feeling becomes an emergent property of the poem's accurate depiction, not its primary content.

Poets achieve universality not by invoking their private sentiments, but by making the world itself speak. The artistry of the poet lies not in confessional self-expression, but in the ability to evoke shared human experience by presenting the world anew. Through this alchemy, the poet enables readers to experience emotion, often more deeply than a direct statement could achieve, precisely because the poet’s own hand remains invisible. The poem resonates as a reflection of life itself, not as a vessel of personal sentiment, and in doing so, transcends the boundaries of individual feeling.