“I have seen the great West, where I ate corn bread and hominy, slept in log houses, with twenty men, women, and children in the same room.”

Recalling the rough conditions and vastness of the western frontier · Letter describing travel in Illinois, 1832

• Adventure
• America
• Travel

“Important, therefore, as may be the office of the imagination in poetry, the great spring of poetry is emotion.”

Placing emotion at the source of poetic creation · Lecture, On the Nature of Poetry, 1825–26

• Emotion
• Imagination
• Poetry

“This is the enthusiasm that is the parent of poetry.”

Locating poetry's origin in deeply felt enthusiasm · Lecture, On the Nature of Poetry, 1825–26

• Creativity
• Emotion
• Poetry