The whole race is a poet that writes downīut “poetry” may also mean what we more usually mean by it it may mean verses written by poets, imaginative compositions which employ a condensed, rhythmic, resonant, and persuasive language. It is this sense of “poetry” which we have in Wallace Stevens’s poem, “Men Made Out of Words,” where he says There are two main ways of understanding the word “poetry.” We may think of poetry as a self-shaping activity of the whole society, a collective activity by means of which a society creates a vision of itself, arranges its values, or adopts or adapts a culture.
I’m going to say a few things about the ways in which poetry might be seen as pursuing happiness. I can’t adjudicate the matter, but even if the darker-minded people are right, we are entitled to ennoble the phrase and adapt it to the present purpose. Some darker-minded people, however, have translated “happiness” as material well-being, or as the freedom to do as you damn please. I am not perfectly certain what our forefathers understood by “the pursuit of happiness.” Of the friends whom I’ve asked for an opinion, the majority have taken that phrase to mean the pursuit of self-realization, or of a full humane life.
