A Defence of Poetry- Percy Bysshe Shelley

I want poetry to set my body free. A cliche possibly, yet what I felt while reading Shelley in relation to my intense need for freedom, was a sense of happiness. A sense that what he too was describing was imaginative freedom. Adding inspiration to the reason; To the base desire of humanity versus the imaginative reason of the poet. Shelley even uses the metaphor of poetry as the "Tree of life" feeding the imagination, the base instinct , to ignite more expression in the mind. Shelley states that " Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds", I like the thought of poetry as happiness. I like comparing the mind of poetry, the free expression of whatever to the scientific realm, to the philosophic, and even to studies of alchemy, as if poetry combined reason and imagination to create this expression of something. Something solid legitimate, " the pencil and the picture, the chisel and the statute, the chord and the harmony."
In class we mentioned the hypocrisy of this piece. Yet i find the work simple, For me the message is not definite or confined, it is free, free like the expression that it represents, it is the combination, the fine delicate ( i hate to say it) tweaking of things to create a mental existence, a word existence that changes the evolution of things. Shelley focuses on the most conscious forms of expression. Reffering to the poet as a "Savage" and honestly, I agree with this statement, i want to produce an existance based upon that which surrounds me in the most brutal light. Maybe it is "chaos of a cyclic poem" but maybe its all relative to the expression we see within the cycle. Shelley does not describe poets as prophetic, yet he does point out that we as we are, as speakers, as word workers, "make beautiful that which is distorted," it is here in Shelley's message that i find the happiness of his perspective on poetry. The syntax of Shelley's narrative even matches the beautiful language of poetry, it does not claim fame or chart with special stars, it is the " very image of life expressed in its eternal truth."