Some closely related topics (the processes of poetic creation, the poetic medium, the process of reading a poem, and the cognitive status of poetry) have been the focus of poetics and criticism.

The antique idea that poetry is to be mimetic, mainly concerned with representing physical phenomena, was reapplied early in this century by such men as T. E. Hulme, Ernest Fenollosa, enlarged by Remy de Gourmont and publicized by Ezra Pound. Further developed by T. S. Eliot, the idea that poets should endeavor to revivify the language of their times by using figurative language, especially metaphors became a movement.

Later, objections to these notions arose. Yvor Winters argued that poetry is not mimetic but meditative: it consists of the poet's experience plus his understanding of it. Others (J. Middleton Murry, Murray Krieger) have also argued that metaphors need not be used as symbols of emotions, and that concretions and abstractions are both alike abstractions from an individual's total apprehension of a situation.

A further criticism has been that Eliot's position that poetry is an expression of some extremely complex state of mind that results in impersonal poems is just too general. This mimetic position denies the possibility of integration of a poet's life and his/her poetry.

Later, H. B. Housman and Herbert Read argued that poetry is governed by psychological-physiological impulses, namely those of the reader. This argument, among other things, insisted that the "meaning" of a poem is not something objective and definable but is created afresh by each reader. Also, that good poems contain irony and paradox.

In later years, people like George Moore pointed out that mimetic poetry could not deal adequately with metaphysical abstractions. This point challenges the view that poetry is just prose made less coherent although more pleasant by the use of meter or rhythm. It argues that poetry can provide important knowledge about the world that is not obtainable by any other means.

I. A. Richards in 1934 accepted the argument that each person creates his/her own reality and that all experiences are, essentially, mental constructions. Wheelright reasserted the claim of poetry to be knowledge. In Poetic Discourses (1958), he stated that "all the modes of meaning, features and functions of everyday language are found in poetry".

In the last few years, memetics has emerged as another way of looking at the psychology of language and the forces that act on information exchange. According to this view, a meme is a unit of cultural transmission or a unit of imitation. (Richard Dawkins). The Oxford English Dictionary defines meme as " . . . that which is imitated. An element of a culture that may be considered to be passed by non-genetic means, esp. imitation." Later, Richard Brodie describes a meme as a "virus of the mind." Lastly, Susan Blackmore describes humans as physical replicators of massive "memeplexes" that coexist with our bodies, and influence and direct our behavior. In this view, the function of memes is to replicate and spread, without regard to an intrinsic moral value.

According to memetics, memetic selection does the work of creating language. In this view, memetic selection as well as genetic selection create better and better meme-spreading apparatus. In other words, the function of language is to spread memes.

When we look at 20th Century poetics, we notice that many ideas, some more successful than others, influenced how poetry has and is being written. The memes extant in the poetry of Pound, Eliot, Cummings, etc. were by definition, culturally relevant at that time. Poetry reflected the ideas that met the evolutionary characteristics of memes: they were instructions for carrying out behavior and passed on by imitation.

We can now formulate a memetic definition of poetry by referring to the general topics addressed by 20th Century Poetics: the processes of poetic creation, the poetic medium, the process of reading a poem, and the cognitive status of poetry.

Bibliography:

The Meme Machine Susan Blackmore
Oxford University Press 1999

Virus of the Mind Richard Brodie
Integral Press 1998

The Selfish Gene Richard Dawkins
Oxford University Press 1976

Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, Alex Preminger, Ed. Princeton University Press 1974

("TOWARD A memetic DEFINITION OF poetry" © Copyright 2000 by Guillermo Echanique. All rights reserved. For reprint permissions contact Wil Wynn, 50 Arlo Rd., 1A, Staten Island, NY. 10301; Tel. (718) 8167340, email WilWynn@aol.com.)