I wondered if Scottie knew he was punning on Geofrey Hartman by calling critics "parasitic" since Hartman does a wonderful job of explaining that relationship in positive ways and as creative writing...in any case, you need to read and know something to dis it well... Ok, digs aside, here's more... In _Biographia Literaria XV_, Coleridge (an old albatross?) comes to our discussion (entering the stage from the right) from England and in time to give us his idea of just what a poet is and does--note how much humanity writers (and implicitly readers) must bring to texts, as well as how Coleridege sees the poet as subordinate to poetry, which I take to mean that literature happens both with and beyond the vision of the writer. "The poet, described in _ideal_ perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other, according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone and spirtiy of unity, that blends, and (as it were) fuses, each into each, by that synthetic and magical power, to which we have exclusively appropriated the name of imagination. This power, first put in action by the will and understanding, and retained under thier irremissive, though gentle and unnoticed, control (_laxis effertur habenis _) reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities: of sameness, with difference; of the general, with the concrete; the idea, with the image; the individual, with the representative; the sense of novelty and freshness, with old and familiar objects; a more than usual state of emotion, with more than usual order; judgement ever awake and steady self-possession, with enthusiasm and feeling profound or vehement; and while it blends and harmonizes the natural and the articificial, still subordinates art to nature; the manner to the matter; and our admiratgion of the poet to our sympathy with the poetry." (I'm quoting punctuation exactly, so complain to Coleridge not me if the grammar was a bit sticky) Let it rip (i'm enjoying the strand!) will