[New-Poetry] looking for poems (and other writing) on "the idea"

[Uche Ogbuji]

Chris Lott wrote:
> I'm in search of poems (and other writing) that has as its topic-- or
> as a significant theme-- the "idea" -- not so much ideas in general,
> but "the idea of the idea" ... what an idea is, how it works, how an
> idea came to one or was discovered. This probably seems pretty vague,
> but as some context: I am preparing for a keynote in which I am
> discussing the history of the concept of the idea from Plato through
> the transition to the idea as generating something new not revealing a
> pre-existing form and how that history is an important consideration
> when contemplating technology, education and creativity...
> 
> I have a lot of philosophical, linguistic and etymological source
> material-- and some Dryden, Chaucer, Keats (negative capability) and
> Eliot (tradition and the individual talent)-- but am looking for a bit
> more.

How about Baldassare Castaglione, Thomas Elyot, Marsilio Ficino and the
other early European Platonists.  The idea of idea was their bread and
tea.  More recently I've always thought that John Stuart Mill's "Idea of
a University" is in itself as much an "Idea of the institution of ideas."


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