DEMOCRACY AND POETRY
by ROBERT PENN WARREN 102 pages. Harvard University Press. $5.95.
Plato banned poets from his republic, but it was a Pyrrhic triumph. Versifiers have a habit of outlasting politicians, and there is a nucleus of truth in Shelley's romantic declaration, "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." From time to time the acknowledged legislators agree; for one brief, shining moment, Robert Frost even shared the inaugural platform with John F. Kennedy. That, however, was a greater victory for p.r. than for poetry. The recent snubbing of Solzhenitsyn by the White House suggests that things have returned to the Platonic...
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