Emotion Recollected in Tranquillity

I have been thinking about Wordsworth's axiom recently as a literary way

of writing poetry in an authentic level based on perceptual experience that I,

as a poet, make an effort to recollect as I lived it when it happened. I think

this practice renders the poem more vivid and gives it unity of thought and

feeling. A poem that is written in this way requires an effort of temporal

retrieval made possible by re-entering the affective memory which is the

memory that is most easily recollected because of its emotional impact.

I think that writing poetry based on emotional recollection allows us

to create a continuum of thought based on the right feeling at the right

time which is what T.S. Eliot sought to achieve in his poetry. Delving into

what we felt during an intense emotional experience allows us to order

our emotions by untangling and purifying them so that we grow

clearer in thought and purer in feeling.