“What kind of knowledge, if any, does poetry provide?” Joseph Acquisto, French language and poetry professor at the University of Vermont, asks in his incredible book, Poetry’s Knowing Ignorance (Bloomsbury). Friedrich Schlegel said that “one can say that it’s a distinguishing mark of poetical genius to know a great deal more than he knows he knows.” Schlegel also noted that poetry and philosophy have reached their limit in what they can do apart. I wonder how you came to ask this question to write the book: WHAT KIND OF KNOWLEDGE does poetry have and why should we consider it having any knowledge at all? It’s well known that Plato said poets lie. What can we learn, really, from forms that hold so much ignorance and unknowing? And if we fall in love with that question itself, what will it open up to us?
Buy the Book: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/poetrys-knowing-ignorance-9781501355240/
