Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job. The rest is literature.

Summary

This quote emphasizes the essence of a poet's role. It suggests that a poet's task is to take something ordinary or commonplace, refine it, and present it in a way that evokes the same feelings of youth, freshness, originality, and spontaneity as it did when it was first experienced. By doing so, the poet achieves their goal. The quote implies that everything else that is written after this transformation is merely literature, suggesting that the true value lies in the poet's ability to illuminate the ordinary and capture its true essence.

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