Last night I was talking with another poet about who we'd like to work with and why. We began to make generalities about schools of thinking on poetry whether we liked them or not. One distinction to which we were (inevitably?) led between "intellectual" and "anti-intellectual" poetry. I said that anti-intellectualism piqued me and expressed frustration: it often implies that my philosophical training has no bearing on writing good poems which I think to be utterly untrue. My friend immediately offered that he appreciated intellectualism -- this is a person who can recite early Frost and Rimbaud by heart -- but that of course he also thought it was important that poetry feel. Reflexively, I responded that I thought that too, and that poetry that expresses "feeling" and "intellectual" poetry need not be opposed. We said yes, yes, and moved on... but I don't think we actually agreed on the definition on "intellectual."
When I say "intellectual" poetry, I mean poetry informed by wide reading and listening. The intellectual omnivorously consumes information and theories about experience and uses them to refine her understanding of her own experience. That is, we can still learn something of how the world works (science, technology) or how it came to be (history) or what it might mean (philosophy) and nonetheless emotively express our relationship to it. You might mention a fact, allude to a myth, or address a philosopher in a poem because doing so allows you to be more clear about a state of affiars. That can happen in third person or first person; it can be confessional or not. (That distinction needs a discussion of its own, by I don't see 'intellectual' and 'confessional' poetry to be opposed: think Hopkins or The Waste Land or Carl Philips.)
What I think a person might mean when she says "intellectual" poetry is writing that addresses conceptual distinctions: philosophical or political ones. For example, this kind of intellectual poet might tell you What Language Is or How to Relate To the Other. That can also happen in first person or third person.
Now, I should think of examples of each of these. In my sense of "intellectual," I think Anne Carson and Frank Bidart write this type of work, rife with allusion and informed by historical reading... but no less able to make you cry or moan or laugh. I don't think of any poets whom I really enjoy who fit the secondary definition, though I'm sure they exist. But I don't like reading them! If you want to give a theory of language, then you really should study and write philosophy. If you want to show experience,then you could write poetry and use some terms from a theory merely because they are more precise that other words. (Or, you could write a letter to your mother or a personal essay... poetry involves lines, meters, imagery, etc., not just commentary on experience)
Well, now I should get back to writing some poetry, intellectual or otherwise.
