Concept

Poet

Overview

A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet might simply be the creator (thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or written), or someone who also performs their art to an audience.

The work of a poet is essentially one of communication, expressing ideas either in a literal sense (such as describing a specific event or place) or metaphorically. Poets have existed since prehistory, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary greatly in different cultures and periods. Throughout each civilization and language, poets have used various styles that have changed over time, resulting in countless poets as diverse as the literature that (since the advent of writing systems) they have produced.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Poet is discussed.

We need not spend time in defining. Where there is no specific difference, as between round and square, all definition must be more or less arbitrary. A man that has _so_ much more of the poetic element developed in him as to have become noticeable, will be called Poet by his neighbours. World-Poets too, those whom we are to take for perfect Poets, are settled by critics in the same way.
Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, and
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Paradise Regained. With Portrait of Milton. Cavalier Poets. With Portrait of Suckling. Humorous Poems. With Portrait of Hood. Herbert. With Portrait of Herbert. Poe. With Portrait of Poe. Owen Meredith. With Portrait of late Lord Lytton. Love Lyrics. With Portrait of Raleigh. German Ballads. With Portrait of Schiller. Campbell. With Portrait of Campbell. Canadian Poems. With View of Mount Stephen. Early English…
David Hume, Hume's Political Discourses
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And because these situations, by constant recurrence, are permanent as man himself and always call up the same sensations, the lyrical productions of genuine poets remain through thousands of years true, powerful, and fresh. But if the poet is always the universal man, then all that has ever moved a human heart, all that human nature in any situation has ever produced from itself, all that dwells and broods in any…
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea
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Nay here in these ages, such as they are, have we not two mere Poets, if not deified, yet we may say beatified? Shakspeare and Dante are Saints of Poetry; really, if we will think of it, _canonized_, so that it is impiety to meddle with them. The unguided instinct of the world, working across all these perverse impediments, has arrived at such result. Dante and Shakspeare are a peculiar Two.
Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History
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This do we call the eternally feminine in us. And as if there were a special secret access to knowledge, which CHOKETH UP for those who learn anything, so do we believe in the people and in their “wisdom.” This, however, do all poets believe: that whoever pricketh up his ears when lying in the grass or on lonely slopes, learneth something of the things that are betwixt heaven and earth. And if there come unto them…
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra
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Philosophers who discussed Poet

Related ideas

Opposing perspectives

Nonsense

Place in the tradition

Part of History of philosophy in Poland.

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