The Lyric

Ask twenty intelligent people what the Thames is, and each may answer, “a river.” Ask what poetry is, and John Drinkwater finds a question that resists any answer so simple.

In this early twentieth-century essay, Drinkwater takes up a debate poets and critics have pursued for centuries. He turns from what poetry does to the words on the page: Coleridge’s “best words in the best order,” tested against the difference between Ruskin’s eloquent prose and Blake’s charged verse. What separates fine writing from poetry, he argues, is not just the thought but the intensity with which it is felt—and shaped into language. That claim sets a demanding standard for every poem, and for every reader’s judgment. When does a carefully chosen phrase become the fullest expression of an experience?

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