Emotion vs. Intellect in Ode to a Nightingale and Since Feeling is Firs

Emotion vs. Intellect in Ode to a Nightingale and Since Feeling is First We must look for guidance from the emotionsnot the mind. This romantic philosophy is envisi adeptd in the works of both John Keatss Ode to a Nightingale and E. E. Cummingss Since Feeling is First. Each poet addresses the complex relationship of following ones emotion and passion as opposed to ones thought. Whereas Cummings supports living life fully in order to escape the confines of thought, Keats suggests death as the that possible means of overcoming this human consciousness. Cummingss Since Feeling is First compares the inadequacy of mental analysis with the witness of wound up spontaneity by arguing feeling and the abandonment of inhibition to larger forces (Heyen 133). For the poet, acute perception comes from feeling, not thinking, which only allows us to see indirectly. In other words, the beauty of the experience is, in and of itself, proof of the power of beauty. Thus, Cummings desires the reade r to render the image of what we see, forgetting everything that existed before us (Cohen 42). Such a statement is not a condemnation of rationality, but instead an affirmation of the mystery of things, which is more compatible with feeling than with knowing, supposing the latter to be a form of measuring that lacks love. For Cummings, mind is only a villain when it becomes dissociated from feeling. Yet, with his first line, it is very important that he convince his reader of his premise that feeling is first. For, Cummings is writing a seduction poem. He is telling the woman in the poem, in a carpe diem manner reminiscent of seventeenth-century style, to make good use of time, to act from feeling, to abandon her syntax in... ...raff, Gerald. Poetic financial statement and Critical Dogma. Evanston Northwestern University Press, 1980. Heyen, William. In Consideration of Cummings. southern Humanities Review Spring. 1983 131-42. Jarrell, Randall. The Profession of Poetry. Partisan R eview Fall. 1950 724-31. Knight, G. Wilson. The Starlit Dome-Studies in the Poetry of Vision. New York Barnes and awful Inc., 1960. Maurer, Robert E. Latter-Day Notes on E. E. Cummingss Language. E. E. Cummings A Collection of Critical Essays. 1972 79-99. Vivante, Leone. English Poetry and its Contribution to the Knowledge of a Creative Principle. Carbondale Southern Illinois University Press, 1983. Wesolek, George. E. E. Cummings A Reconsideration. Renascence Autumn. 1965 3-8. Williams, Meg Harris. Inspiration in Milton and Keats. Totowa Barnes and Noble Books, 1982.