Richard Matthews: No. And yes. It was undoubtedly an accurate assessment of what poetry was for Wordsworth and some, even many, others; but it doesn't quite hit the nail on the head when talking about, say, Celan or The Cantos. I do not believe that poetry is monolithic, and I suspect that if it --- even if they, the many poetries --- were containable by definition I should love it that much less. I think that poetry is best defined not by what you dissert about it in observing it, but by what you assert about it in doing it. I write poems in order to define what poetry is for me, what it has been, and what it can be. At least, that's part of the program.
Mary Jo Bang: I might agree to a statement that claimed poetry is "the spontaneous overflow of powerful" thoughts. But the idea of poetry engined by feelings alone is a myth and one that promotes naive ideas of poetry as the offspring of a tormented soul.
Marc Woodworth: A quotation for a quotation, this one from Robert Pinsky: "The responsibility of the poet is to take that which is NOT poetic and to make it so."
Marge Piercy: I don't think there's a lot that's spontaneous. Sometimes a poem comes entire, as if dictated, but mostly you work at it. What I admired about Wordsworth and the essay from which that is taken is the insistence on using the language people speak, refined, but alive.
Billy Collins: Poetry for me is the attempt to balance myself on fence that separates emotion and humor. I think the name for that fence is Irony.
Cornelius Eady: What I think Wordsworth means here is that all poetry --- spontaneous writing aside --- is an act of memory, which I agree with. The "recollection" these days. however, sometimes happens in what he would probably feel was less than ideal circumstances --- on a bus, between classes (during classes, if the class is large and dull enough) at work, after work, before the kids go off to school, etc. Since a lot of writers never get rich or can't get off to writer's colonies, the "tranquility" needed to get to hear what a poem is trying to tell you sometimes has to be negotiated.
Honor Moore: Poetry is what Wordsworth said, but it is also the verbalization of thought or dream, the hidden voice, the dream voice...
Jeffrey Greene: I believe in the "emotion recollected in tranquility" part, getting some distance on the dramatic situation behind a poem. A tirade is rarely a successful source for a poem because so much craft is required. A poem is often fashioned to appear to be "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings," but I firmly believe that language has a built-in ingeniousness that the poet has to make himself or herself available to, the unexpected word or phrase, the omission that gives unintended meaning, opposites and paradoxes that reveal the truth of human experience. A frequent frustration in poetry writing is achieving the poem that one intended.
