Poet and Psychologist: A Conversation

ABSTRACT

I consider poetry composition from both the “inside” view of a poet and the “outside” view of a cognitive psychologist. From the perspective of a psychologist, I review behavioral and neural studies of the reception and generation of poetry, with emphasis on metaphor and symbolism. Taking the perspective of a poet, I discuss how the seeds for a poem may arise. Finally, I consider the prospects for future developments in a field of computational neurocognitive poetics.

Acknowledgments

Preparation of this paper was supported by NSF Grant BCS-2022477. I thank Dušan Stamenković, Bryor Snefjella, and Arthur Jacobs for advice and assistance in identifying relevant research. Herbert Colson, Albert Katz, and Carina Rasse provided useful comments on an earlier draft.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the NSF [BCS-2022477].