As Plato would have it (though I can’t help but point out that science alone turns dirt under the foundations of his world view), the poet is to be exiled from the perfect society.
As a young man, I would sit in the canyon and read The Republic in the cool breeze of the summer by Oak Creek, escaping the desert heat burning down below in the red and green valley. At the time a student of philosophy more than literature, though the two not so inseparable now, I should have finished the book. Never read Book X. If in my youthful studies, I had come to this defense of poesy against banishment, I might have had a more focused effort in this endeavor.
Ironically, philosophy itself, could fall prey to this very argument, that it itself is contrived, created, an imitation of our actual thoughts and logic. Modern psychology bears this out. Even our memories are made over and over again. Each a mimic of reality.
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Plato bans the bard
