Figures of Reality

Figures of Reality (1981) may be described as a polemic against those who feel poetry to be remote from normal life – an abstruse and empty game. The author argues from a contrary perspective, shared by many poets in the Romantic and Surrealist tradition, in which poetry is viewed as being vitally related to our awareness of reality. This penetrating discourse on the roots of poetry in the imagination suggests that the fascination of an illusory image lies precisely in our consciousness of its d