henry copeland:
In the rose-twined kingdom of poetry, a metaphor sits on the bloody throne. pllqt.it/NcPrlp
What gives poetry its aesthetic appeal? New research has well-versed answer -- ScienceDaily
Their results showed that vividness of mental imagery was the best predictor of aesthetic appeal -- poems that evoked greater imagery were more pleasing. Emotional valence also predicted aesthetic appeal, though to a lesser extent; specifically, poems that were found to be more positive were generally found to be more appealing. By contrast, emotional arousal did not have a clear relationship to aesthetic appeal. Notably, readers did not at all agree on what poems they found appealing, an outcome that supports the notion that people have different tastes; nonetheless, there is common ground -- vividness of imagery and emotional valence -- in what explains these tastes, even if they vary. "The vividness of a poem consistently predicted its aesthetic appeal," notes Starr, author of Feeling Beauty: The Neuroscience of Aesthetic Experience (MIT Press). "Therefore, it seems that vividness of mental imagery may be a key component influencing what we like more broadly."- www.sciencedaily.com