Van der Leeuw on Poetry - Julia Allen

 This is a quote I mentioned in my final exam essay but want to talk about it even more : “The poet is the man who controls the power of the word. For this reason he stands in close relation to the prophet”. The way that he draws a parallel between religion and poetry is so interesting to me. He also says that "the poet is, in the strict sense, a mythologist, a creator of words.", which likens poets to a god. He creates being and is a prophet to those around him through his use of words to express and create stories. This is one reason that I love poetry because I really do think that poets create a language all of their own once they begin to work. It's a language that comes from our own, but isn't the everyday language that we use commonly.