Critical Reading For Exams / Short Reading Comprehension 22

Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, petty metaphors, “grace” metaphors, and goes on to the profoundest thinking  that we have. Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. People say, “Why  don’t you say what you mean?” We never do that, do we, being all of us too much poets. We like to talk in parables and in hints and in indirections—whether from diffidence or some other instinct.