Poetry does start from individual subjectivity, but unlike many moderns, we need not stop there. “Poetic diction” is when words are chosen and arranged so that their meaning produces (or clearly intends to produce) “aesthetic imagination”. Since this concerns meaning, this book is about states of consciousness.

Poetic diction produces aesthetic pleasure through a change in consciousness. Sometimes this is accidental; the South Sea pidgin English “thlee piecee bamboo, two-piecee puff-puff, walk inside, no-can-see” is not poetry to a South Sea islander, but it does cause a Westerner to look at a steamer differently. Instead of seeing three masts and two funnels (the book was written in 1928), we just immediately say “steamer”, so the pidgin phrase forces us to look at the component parts. Another is the form of the verse; ballads are different than spoken English and so produce a certain pleasure. However, reading a book of ballads at one sitting reduces the effect, because the difference is less apparent since the recent experience is all ballads. The pleasure comes from the expansion of our consciousness that the poetry enables; it is the moment of expansion by the poetic identification of a meaning new to us. This expansion can become a possession, incorporated into one’s permanent consciousness. We call this expansion of meaning wisdom (differing from knowledge, which is the ability to connect sense-perceptions as pointing to phenomenon, such as recognizing that red blob is a square, and furthermore, that the square as a house).

Language has two forces operating on it: the poetic principle and the logical principle. Consciousness begins united with life and indistinguishable from it: direct perception see a unity. The logical principle operates by splitting meanings. In children we see a progression from no distinction between self and life, to everything being his, to a distinction between self and not self. This splitting is, in fact, what produces self-consciousness. This same operation happens in languages. Primitive languages have words for “to cut meat” and “to cut vegetables”. Over time, the logical principle refines and abstracts meaning and we get the abstract “to cut”. We still have some of a few things like this left: “that turns my stomach” conveys both the feeling in your stomach and the revulsion that produced the feeling (but we have lost the meanings of the other organs like liver and spleen). The logical principle destroys the meaning which was previously experienced but not able to be identified. The cost of increasing self-consciousness is converting meaning into abstractions.

The poetic principle re-creates meaning by creating metaphor (which then begins to be abstracted by the logical principle). Coleridge was the first to use point of view as a metaphor using the artistic method of perspective to mean seeing from a interpretive perspective. His metaphor has ceased to be metaphor to us, and the processes has enriched our language—our consciousness—with its new abstract meaning. This cyclic process slowly expands the consciousness of humanity. The Newtonian-era (Gallileo, Copernicus, Newton, etc.) conception of nature as obeying laws—itself a metaphor—would not have been possible in earlier times like ancient Greece, since abstraction had not reached a level where that metaphor could be perceived.

A popular theory of language development (at least in 1928) was, observing the cycle of abstraction and metaphor, to project this backward and argue that primordial language was pure poetry (such as Le Guin’s Barfield-inspired truespeech in A Wizard of Earthsea). This would seem to explain why our earliest writings are poetry and myths, and why Homer seems to have not been surpassed in 3000 years. However the creation of metaphor (the poetic) requires a body of abstract meanings (the prosaic), so a primordial poetic language would need to also have fine abstractions like we have now, which is essentially assuming our present conditions in the distant past. Instead, we see that primordial language has less conscious meaning—people experience meaning but do not know it. We have already seen the lack of the abstract cut as observed in some aboriginal languages. Another example is the lack of distinguishing of wind, breath, and spirit. In both ancient Greek and Hebrew the same word is used for all three, leading us to conclude that the ancient eastern Mediterranean (if not farther) could not identify a difference between the biological life-principle that produces breath in animals, the life-principle that produces life in trees (hence tree spirits in Greece), the intangible life-principle that seems to make us different than the animals (spirit), and the non-material beings that humanity has consistently encountered (angels, demons, faeries, etc.: “spirits”). We see some of this inability to distinguish in the Odyssey, where Athena is described as acting, but what is perceived is another person saying something. So when Telemachos takes up courage and organizes his fellows into a princely expedition to friends of his father to ask for news of his father, this is described as Athena appearing in the form of Mentor and suggesting the idea to him. (In fact, the gods act a little more independently in the Iliad, which suggests it is a newer work.)

What Barfield calls “poetic”, he suggests other people call “creative”. A Poet is one who creates meaning, which could be in verse or in prose. A second-rate poet wants to write “poetry” and to be a “poet”, and so he must use a form already established to be poetry. A creator-Poet wants to “get back to Nature”, so tends to create new forms, since the existing forms become limiting. It takes time for a new form to be established, though, so Poets tend to be appreciated after their lifetime.

Poetic diction tends to use archaism, for several reasons. One is for the effect of strangeness, like Milton using medieval vocabulary in a poem about knighthood. A deeper reason has to do with the nature of the evolution of language. Indo-European languages tend to move from inflected languages (like Latin) to positional grammars (like English). The restriction in word order favors prose rather poetry, which is “the right words in the right order”, as Coleridge said. It is not accidental that highest flourishing of English poets was in the Elizabethan age, after the influx of new French vocabulary (and therefore, abstract meanings) and while word order was fairly flexible. For this same reason poets tend to be attracted to Elizabethan word order.

Barfield traces the process of meaning-making with the word ruin. In Latin it meant something like “to rush toward destruction”. Chaucer still uses it this way, but around Shakespeare’s time, it starts being used as a noun, splitting the verb of destruction and the result. Shakespeare, as he was wont to do, captured the spirit of the word: when Arthur falls from a wall to his death, the “ruin” of his body is observed. This captures both the Latin aspect of fall / destruction as well the metaphoric result, all in one usage. Later, Dryden uses it metaphorically, in the Aeneid when Helen sees “the ruin of her face” in the mirror. Some poets revive the Latin meaning, with a waterfall “ruining” over the cliff. A modern poet has used ruin metaphorically to evoke intense nostalgic desire. Naturally, then, he commends the deep study of words.

Along with the cycle of poetic - logical principles increasing the consciousness and wisdom of mankind, he also sees a similar cycle taking place in poets. Plato said that the seer and the interpreter must be two different people, because the seer is consumed in the experience of the inspiration and so cannot use their rational faculty. He also said that people considered that poetry could not be composed outside this inspired state. In modern times, the poetic state is considered to be more of a mood, that may come on you, but which can also be entered into. However, since poetry must communicate, the poet must use the rational faculty to write it. This means that the poet must alternate between the poetic and the rational states. Barfield envisions a future when poets are able alternate between the two so quickly and naturally that they are essentially in both states at once.

My favorite example of poetry that Barfield gives is from “The Willow” by Walter de la Mare, because it has a sacramental aspect to it (intentionally or not):

In mute desire she sways softly;
Thrilling sap up-flows;
She praises God in her beauty and grace,
Whispers delight. And there flows
A delicate wind from the Southern seas,
Kissing her leaves. She sighs.
While the birds in her tresses make merry;
Burns the sun in the skies.

Poetic Diction is a poetic book. I repeatedly found my consciousness expanded (that is, I perceived that nature of realities that before had been mysteries). I found my mind wandering in a forest of poetic ideas, actually in the same way that reading John of Damascus’ summary of Aristotle’s classification system gave me all sorts of computer programming ideas. Tolkien, Lewis, and Le Guin all read this book, and I think that it is responsible for some of the mythic longing that all three (especially Tolkien and Le Guin) evoke.

Barfield takes the opposite approach of C.S. Lewis in his didactic books: instead of starting with the core idea of the topic and then exploring it, Barfield takes the journey approach of starting with observations about poetry and then coming to the core ideas. I have largely reversed this in my summary (and added some ideas and explanations), as I prefer the other direction. However, it is effective. Perhaps it is even necessary for someone (like myself) who is unfamiliar with the topic; I only read the book because I discovered that Lewis and Tolkien were deeply influenced by it. If you find this summary confusing, you will probably like the book better!

This is the first book that has a reasonable explanation for what myth is. He rightly dismisses the idea that myths explain natural phenomena; ancient people were smart, unlike we give them credit for. He says that they are “corpses” of concrete meaning, concrete here meaning not material (like “to-cut-a-deer”) and not abstract (“to cut”), but neither. Unfortunately he does not go into much detail, and his example of of Demeter revealing the connection between sleep/death, death/rebirth / winter/spring seems a little forced to me. It seems to me that myths are not so much corpses of meaning, but rather a more sort of Poetry, an expression of the relationship over time. I might grant the gods as personification (e.g. Demeter, Athena in the Odyssey) might be a corpse of meaning, but I think the myths around Zeus are something more. Although, if Barfield meant that we no longer see the world in a way at all compatible with the myths, then in that sense they are certainly corpses of meaning.

At the end of a rational age that has consumed the meaning from, I think Barfield’s ideas are the way forward. There has been talk of “re-enchantment” in some Christian, especially Orthodox/Catholic/Anglican, circles. However, enchantment goes two ways. Charles Taylor observes that in the Middle Ages (and prior) we influenced by forces outside our control: demonic forces pulling us to sin, and protected / aided by angels and saints. Disenchantment means we no longer worry about that (perhaps a little too blithely); a return to medieval enchantment might return more meaning, but at a cost. There were multiple reasons way the Middle Ages ended, and those reasons are why we cannot return. But Barfield offers a better path: instead of re-enchantment, we can Poets, creators of meaning. Ted Gioia predicts a new Romanticism as we swing away from excessive rationalism, but Romanticism can only go so far, and risks sentimentalism. The Wind in the Willows is great, but offers little of transcendence like Tolkien, Lewis, and Le Guin (even if Le Guin’s transcendence was colored by darkness and animism). Again, Barfield offers a better path. Instead of merely connecting us with meaning through Nature, as Christian Poets we can connect people to the transcendent divine oneness of the triune God. We can follow the Beautiful, the Good, and the True to bring a taste of transcendent Beauty, transcendent Goodness, transcendent Truth, and even the oneness of Being itself. Christians have always done this, although much less so in our age, but Barfield offers a framework how to look for and communicate this poetic Beauty.


Review: 10 (however, this edition has many OCR errors which feels unprofessional)
This is both a timely book and empirically a 100-year book, albeit not widely known. Barfield, however, expected that it would be fifty years after his death before these ideas bore their fruit.

▶ Notes

Copyright © 2026 by Geoffrey Prewett