Identity and Society in American Poetry: The Romantic Tradition
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Even Plato’s notion of poetry as an imitation of an imitation, and therefore insufficiently close to the truth to have a place in the polis, treats the poem as a thing—an imitation, not a depiction or a representation, but another, if somewhat diminished, version of physical reality (which is itself a diminished version of the ideas). In Aristotle’s Poetics, the poet or dramatist engages in imitation of nature, a somewhat more positive spin on poetic mimesis. In this case, the poet’s role is educative; by making nature visible he or she allows us to see and understand the world. Therefore, the objectivity inherent in the medium itself (i.e., it consists of a stable set of words on paper or parchment) is an important part of its value. Approached this way, the poem allows the reader, again, a fairly straightforward experience, and, by this Aristotelian notion, the imaginative or creative power of the poet is far less than that proposed by the Elizabethan critic George Puttenham, who defined poetry as a mix of imitation and creation:

A poet is as much to say as a maker… Such as (by way of resemblance and reverently) we may say of God; who without any travail to his divine imagination made all the world of nought, nor also by any pattern or mould, as the Platonics with their ideas do fantastically suppose. Even so the very poet makes and contrives out of his own brain both the verse and matter of his poem, and not by any foreign copy or example, as doth the translator, who therefore may well be said a versifier, but not a poet… And nevertheless, without any repugnancy at all, a poet may in some sort be said a follower or imitator, because he can express the true and lively of everything is set before him, and which he taketh in hand to describe; and so in that respect is both a maker and counterfeiter; and poesy an art not only of making, but also of imitation. (57)

The idea of imitation in the sixteenth century had often been described as feigning (Cowl): feigning history or nature or the truth. The term lacked its current negative connotation, but tacitly imagined the poet as active, even performing like a stage actor. Similarly, Puttenham allied the idea of imitation and creation, denying Platonic idealism as a source of creation for God, with whom he likens the poet, who makes the poem “out of his own brain.”