Ellen Reiss, on the Aesthetic Realism Explanation of Poetry

Why have people loved poetry, written it, read it--even memorized it--for centuries? As an English teacher, I love studying poetry with my classes, and I am moved by how my students respond to it. I want people to know of the writing of Ellen Reiss, the Class Chairman of Aesthetic Realism, whose study of and explanation of poetry, through the principles about beauty stated by Eli Siegel, has been an invaluable source of education for me. "Poetry," stated Mr. Siegel, "is the oneness of the permanent opposites in reality as seen by an individual." This is what Ellen Reiss describes richly in the writing here. She explains the relation of poetry--and also prose works--to the hopes, confusions, desires of people.