A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feelings through words.
This may sound easy. It isn’t.
A lot of people think or believe or know they feel — but that’s thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is feeling — not knowing or believing or thinking.
Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself.
To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
E.E. Cummings, E. E. Cummings: A Miscellany Revised
Soul in the machine 
Thankyou Anastasia. Feeling seems to be so important. This post reminds me of the philosopher Eugene Gendlin’s psychotherapeutic technique Focusing, which seeks a felt sense as a doorway to unravel difficult issues. I recently read that Jung considered complexes to have feelings at their centre. Then there is this intuitional thing, which maybe comes out of some sense of feeling.
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Intuition is what Plato calls phronesis. It is a thinking from the heart. It is not a hunch as much as a knowing. It is more powerful than “human knowledge” and more certain in its expression. It is an experience of deep connection and intimacy that goes beyond anything mental knowledge can bring.
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