[Michael F]

I saw “A Quiet Passion” yesterday. The portrait of Dickinson was darker than I imagine her, and it got me thinking about the relationship of poetry to happiness, which is an old question, but seems central to Davies’s vision. Is happiness or contentment inimical to writing good poetry, as a general rule? I can think of historical examples where unhappiness seemed to spur poetic creativity. If one is content to live, does that contentment curtail the need to write, as Yeats conjectured? Does living itself become the poem? Is this what happened to Eliot?

Do we value the poetry of suffering over the poetry of happiness?

I’m interested both in historical examples and in personal experience – all thoughts welcome...