Tolerance and Temptation

Exceptional poetry is rare enough that it requires the reader to be tolerant of, open for and receptive of many differentiating particularities of those poet who can write it: e.g. David Jones' Welsh and Catholic mythology. More dangerously, it can call for the same openness to a writer's vices and failings: e.g. Pound's fascism, Yeats' and Hughes' and Plath's occultism.

This combination of tolerance and temptation creates a curious situation in which the creation of increasing amounts of exceptional poetry weakens the impetus towards that empathy, but also protects against susceptibility to other failings. It is easier not to stray outside our tribe, but also to not betray our values.

This is, of course, a minor effect (empathy and integrity are too important in their own right), but I suspect that it is nonetheless real, as well as curious.