In the essay “Poets and Personal Pronouns,” Augusta Webster discusses the amount of personal expression a poet puts into his or her work. It delves into the differences between a novelist and a poet and elaborates on the importance of creative imagination; also analyzes a poet's use of personal pronouns and what each pronoun may indicate to the reader. Throughout the essay, he consistently states the importance of realizing that an individual poet is separate from the self he presents in his own work. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay To open the essay, Webster begins with a comparison between a novelist and a poet. she states, he does not have to follow the same rules as a poet, from a novelist we expect "a specificity and possibility for each character, a suitability of conduct, language and feeling, to the time and theater of the chosen events, which they will. the story read as true” (Webster, “Poets and Personal Pronouns”). When reading a novel, the reader expects all events to be plausible. The reader is required to believe that the events of the story are true in order to be fully immersed in the novel. As Webster points out shortly thereafter, this is very different from a poet's purpose. Webster says that we expect very different things from a poet. We ask a poet “that his characters are not clearly defined, not even in the drama that they are defined with the minute definition of the novel, while it will seem impossible that they are not, or are different from what they are; and we ask for a suitability not so much to a given time and a given theater as to always and everywhere, no matter under what disguise of date and history” (Webster, “Poets and Personal Pronouns”). It is much more important for the poet to affirm the universality of his work; its characters and emotions should not be limited to a single person. The poet's aim is to be able to identify himself over time and in different circumstances. However, this is not to say that the poet cannot draw from past experiences or people. Webster explains further of the poet: “He need not, of course, create in the sense that the character or events he is portraying need not have pre-existed in reality or fiction; on the contrary, the highest powers of the creative imagination have usually found their best exercise in the intensified representation of men and women and the events of history or legends and tales” (Webster, “Poets and Personal Pronouns”) . The poet must develop a more subtle ability than that of creating with “the limitlessness of free invention.” Webster describes this skill: “The poet creates as a sculptor does; it is not necessary that he make the stone as well as the statue. His function is not, like that of the novelist, to devise new stories, but to make old stories new” (Webster, “Poets and Personal Pronouns”). However, the men and women the poet portrays must not be simply an imitation of those people he knows in reality; they must arise from his creative imagination. While the poet should certainly draw on past experiences, it would not be appropriate if he were inspired by a very specific person or even a very specific event. The whole singularity of a poet is that of being universal and allowing the reader to experience events and emotions in the same way he would himself. As Webster states: No one wants the poet to design characters in such a way that each seems the presentation of a special person known in the flesh; this is a purpose best left to the novelist…. We look to the poet for feelings, thoughts, actions, if necessary, represented in a way that weit will influence as the manifest expression of what we ourselves should have felt, thought and done if we had been the ones he puts before us and in their cases. (Webster, “Poets and Personal Pronouns”) The poet's purpose is to incite the reader to imagine his own actions and emotions in similar circumstances; furthermore, the poet should evoke in the reader what no real circumstance could even evoke. Poets should evoke murderers among incapable and temperate readers; they should inspire blissful love in the hardest hearts; they should allow the reader to experience cultures outside of his own, as if he himself had grown up in a similar environment. However, this very embodiment of emotions and circumstances triggers many misconceptions about the origin of a poet's work. Because the poet's work often evokes such strong emotions in the reader and paints such vivid scenarios, it is difficult for the reader to believe that these poems are not in fact based in some reality. Webster states: “And yet, since the very nature of the poet's description shows that he cannot make it by reference to individual models, it is the poet above all who the general public is accustomed to assume to have filled his canvases with studies directed by living secular figures.” (Webster, “Poets and Personal Pronouns”). If the poet inserts a female character into his poem, the reader assumes that she must be based on a girl he knows in reality; if a poem mentions a grandmother, the reader evaluates whether the character was based on the poet's paternal or maternal grandmother. The reader constantly tries to make connections between the poet's work and everyday life, even in the most ridiculous ways. Personal descriptions can also be expanded to accommodate almost anyone; the brown-haired girl in the poem must represent the brown-haired girl who is close to the poet, and so on. As common as it may be for readers to find the poet's acquaintances in his work, it is even more common for readers to search for the poet himself. Readers are often misled by the idea that a poet's work represents the poet. Webster states: “But above all the poet is believed to be his secular figure. It is believed that he offers his readers the presentation of himself, his hopes, his loves, his sorrows, his guilt and remorse, his history and his psychology in general” (Webster, “Poets and Personal Pronouns” ). The poet is believed to be the embodiment of his poems; the reader does not understand that to fully appreciate the universality of the poem it is necessary to distance it from the author. Or rather, the reader must allow the poet to distance himself from his work. Some readers even go so far as to believe the poet to be faithful to the opinions expressed in his work, even if they are not intended to be a profession of his beliefs. . Webster verbalizes an example: "Some people so firmly believe that this is the correct view of the poet's position towards the public that they will despise a man as a hypocrite because, having written and printed, 'I am the bridegroom of Despair,' or for some unsociable feeling, he goes out to dinner and behaves like everyone else” (Webster, Poets and Personal Pronouns”). Readers seem to want to keep the poet true to every belief, emotion, experience or idea he expresses in his work since the poet is meant to be a medium for all emotions and experiences, this would be quite overwhelming indeed that poets do not feel or experience everything they write flaw in the moral character of poets in general is that they do not feel everything they write - in the sense that they do not feel it in their person, as part of their experience.