"Stewart ranges over thousands of years of poetic production in multiple languages in order to consider the importance of poetry as a central act of human making. She studies the way in which poems mediate between individual and social existence, and argues for the importance of how poetry encodes forms of sensory experience. This book contains thrilling meditations on the creation and reception of poetry, reconsiderations of many of the key philosophical statements on poetry from Plato to Hegel and beyond, and rich readings of poets from Ancient Greece through the twentieth century."

Recommended by Eric Falci, Associate Professor of English and author of Continuity and Change in Irish Poetry, 1966-2010