Fragment 215

Barthes writes:
One might call “poetic” (without value judgement) any discourse in which the word leads the idea…
This suggests for me a taxonomy of poets, those in which the idea leads the word, and those in which the word leads the idea.

Idea leading word:
Auden
Brodsky
Walcott
Browning
Byron
Dryden
Emily Dickinson
etc
This group of poets constrains language to express an idea (which can often be an image). The idea predominates, and language serves the expression of the idea. Words are sought and placed together to give power to the idea.

Word leading idea:
Hopkins
Keats
Dylan Thomas
Yeats
Donne
Ezra Pound
e.e.cummings

etc
This group of poets is intoxicated with the breathy, physical, auditory power of the word; the word becomes a physical object, although an impermanent one, and ideas are often buried beneath, lost within the power of the expression.

Come to think of it, this might also be an Apollonian/Dionysian taxonomy…