Coleridge nature and function of poetry and difference between prose and poetry

           Introduction

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a poet, philosopher, and literary critic whose writing have been enormously influential in the development of modern thought. He is greater than great and a genius of his poetic work as we can look in his poems and by that feeling of nature, romance preciousness we feel. Coleridge was also known to many English readers as a talented prose writer, especially as the author of the Biographia Literaria.

 Difference between Prose and Poetry

Coleridge poses numerous questions regarding the nature and function of poetry and then answers them. He also examines the way in which poetry differs from other kinds of artistic activity, and the role and significance of metre as an essential and significant part of the poem. He begins by emphasising the difference between prose and poetry. "A poem contains the same elements as a prose composition". Both use words. Then, the difference between poem and prose composition cannot lie in the medium, for each employs words. It must, therefore, "consists in a different combination of them, in consequence of a different object being proposed". A poem combines words differently, because it is seeking to do something different." All it may be seeking to do may be to facilitate memory. You may take a piece of prose and cast it into rhymed and metrical form in order to remember it better". Rhymed tags of that kind, with their frequent, "sounds and quantities", yield a particular pleasure too, though not of a very high order.

     Distinctive Pleasure

According to Coleridge the immediate purpose of a poem is to give pleasure to the reader and another thing is that everything else in the poem is supposed to be secondary. It means Coleridge's prime aim is reader. On the other side the immediate purpose is to communicate truth, a poem must causes and organic unity wherein metre, rhyme everything is used in a poem an artistic way while they are not used in the prose. If metre is used superficially it can be a poem, but a poem cannot please us if there is no organic unity Coleridge thinks the main aim of poetry is only one and that is to give pleasure.

    The significance of Metre

Coleridge does not regard metre as essential for poetry. He clearly says that poetry of highest kind may exist without metre. He also believes that metre to be useful and necessary for writing poetry, he refers to Plato, Bermet, Jeremy who wrote without metre. Coleridge believes that rhyme and metre are essential in order to memorize what is written and to develop a certain kind of attachment to it by getting the feeling of the words through a particular rhyme or rythm. 

    Distinction between Poem and Poetry

Coleridge's distinction between poem and poetry is not clear enough. By the word 'poetry' he means all kind of imaginative activity. Only in his sense he has drawn a distinction between 'poem' and 'poetry'. He says that "a poem is that species of composition which is opposed to works of science by proposing for its immediate object pleasure not truth". Coleridge gives no real justification of the old statement of a poem of any length neither can be nor ought to be all poetry, poetry for Coleridge is a wider category than that of a poem.

Poetry is a kind of activity which can be engaged in painters or philosophers or scientists and is not confined to those who employ metrical language or even to those who employ language of any kind; poetry in this largest sense brings 'the whole soul of the man' into activity with each faculty playing its proper part according to its relative worth and dignity. This takes place whenever the 'secondary imagination' comes into operation.

To quote Coleridge what is poetry? Is so nearly the same question with that what is poem? The answer to the one is involved in the solution of the other . For it is a distinction resulting from the poetic genius itself which sustains and modifies the images, thoughts, emotions of the poet's own mind, thus the difference between poem and poetry is not given in the clear terms. 

John Shawcross writes: 

"This distinction between 'poetry' and 'poem' is not clear, and instead of defining poetry he proceeds to describe a poet, and from the poet he proceeds to enumerate the characteristics of the imagination".

This is so because poetry for Coleridge is an activity of the poet's mind and poem is merely one of the form of expression, a verbal expression of that activity is basically an activity of imagination, imagination is the prime source for the poet without that poet cannot write.

Poem is a nature function as Coleridge explaining his ideas and view towards it by saying that poem is a heart of reality work that poetry convey the feelings by rhyme and that took place as golden shield.

          Conclusion

According to Coleridge he says poem and poetry is not any length he given a new criticism and this was provided by Coleridge in the 'Biographia Literaria'. Biographia Literaria is a fashion of autobiography, literary criticism and philosophical theory. Fact and fiction both are very important part of literature. Thus, Coleridge is the first English critic based his literary criticism on philosophical principles. For him 'art is more important' than any other thing.