They are, Shelley said, the unofficial legislators of the world. Or, as Horace called them, the first teachers of mankind. Whatever their claims, Frieda Hughes, our new poetry columnist, will be keeping a close eye on them for us. Poets may feel today that their world has shrunk: no longer do they shape our civilisations, voice our national aspirations or fill our theatres and stadia (except in Russia). Where are the Drydens and Tennysons of yesteryear? John Betjeman was probably the last poet truly to bestride the national stage as once several did.
Yet poets still command our awe. By day they masquerade as mere mortals: insurance clerks, teachers, librarians. But by night they prowl like panthers, seizing words on the run and crunching raw emotion. Their works may be hard, opaque, obscured by a carapace of modernity. But if the skein of emotion can be unravelled, there stand revealed many age-old conundrums. From Donne to Auden, Herbert to Larkin, poets have struggled to tame their emotions or grasp for the Almighty.
Everyone, as Frieda Hughes insists, has the instinct of poetry inside them. English-speakers ought, especially, to give it resonant voice: not only do we have one of the world’s richest, most flexible and most tantalisingly playful languages; we also have an unrivalled legacy, going back to Chaucer, to inspire us. The instinct is best served when young. Not all children can master words, let alone emotions; but they can all learn by heart lines whose rhythms will remain with them later. Housman said that he could no more define poetry than a terrier can a rat. Like him, however, we know it when we see it, read it or hear it.