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

[Robin Hamilton]

From: "Uche Ogbuji" <uche at ogbuji.net>

> 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" ...
...
> 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."

I'd meant to pick up on this earlier, but the complex of writers Uche points 
to here [to whom I'd add Pico della Mirandola, naturally <g>] get versified 
by Edmund Spenser in the _Four Hymns_ (to Earthly and Heavenly Love and 
Beauty).

Spenser's is trite stuff, and John Donne does it better -- Ben Jonson 
alleged that Donne said he wrote _The Anniversaries_ "about the Idea of a 
woman, and not as she was."

Even in the Renaissance, the sense of "idea" (Christianised as the Thoughts 
of God) is slippery, mostly but not always corresponding to the Platonic 
Form.

Later (with Locke?  Uche?) the predominant modern sense of "concept" takes 
over.

I'm better on the Renaissance period than I am on later material.  But even 
there, it's been some considerable time since I've been involved with this.

Robin