Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and

Hear, O seekers of fire and spirit, the voice of Denis Diderot, who declared: “Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast, and wild.” In this saying, the philosopher reminds us that poetry is not meant to be tamed like a domesticated beast, nor confined to the gentle gardens of polite society. Poetry must carry within it the rawness of nature, the unbroken force of the wilderness, the thunder of storms and the howl of wolves. Without this untamed quality, poetry risks becoming a hollow ornament—beautiful, perhaps, but lifeless.

For the barbaric in poetry is that which shocks us awake, which cuts through the veil of civility and exposes the primal pulse of existence. It is not refinement alone that gives verse its power, but the roughness that reminds us we are creatures of blood and earth. The barbaric is the cry of Achilles in grief, the fury of a Viking skald chanting on the battlefield, the blunt passion of Whitman declaring himself “untranslatable.” This element tears away pretension and forces us to feel the raw nerve of life.

The vast in poetry is its reach beyond the smallness of daily affairs. It is the ocean in Homer, the endless heavens in Dante, the cosmic sweep of Blake’s visions. Poetry that is vast does not concern itself only with the trivial; it expands the heart, stretches the mind, and dares to encompass the infinite. In its vastness, poetry becomes more than words—it becomes a mirror of the universe, reflecting both stars and shadows.

The wild in poetry is its unpredictability, its refusal to be caged by rules or confined to the expected. The wild is found in Rimbaud’s delirious visions, in Ginsberg’s howls, in Emily Dickinson’s compressed lightning. It is the element of surprise, the spark that leaps beyond reason into revelation. The wild keeps poetry alive, ensures that it cannot be domesticated into mere formula. It is what makes a poem not only read but felt, as if it leapt off the page and took hold of the soul.

Consider Beowulf, that ancient Anglo-Saxon epic. It is filled with barbaric cries, vast landscapes of sea and swamp, and the wild terror of monsters. Yet within this roughness lies its majesty. It is not polished courtly verse but something older, more elemental, and because of this it endures. Even now, we feel its raw power, for it speaks to something eternal within us. Diderot’s words remind us that such qualities are not flaws but the very essence of poetry’s greatness.

And think of the Romantics, like Lord Byron, whose poetry shocked his age with its unruly passion, its vast imagery of storms and ruins, its wild cry for freedom. He was no tame poet, and his verse reflected this: reckless, boundless, fierce. Though criticized in his time, his work exemplifies Diderot’s vision: poetry that is barbaric, vast, and wild seizes the soul with a force that cannot be ignored.

Therefore, O children of tomorrow, take this lesson to heart: do not fear the roughness in your words, nor the enormity of your vision, nor the unruliness of your spirit. Let your poetry contain something barbaric, that it may cut through the numbness of the age. Let it be vast, that it may remind us of the infinite beyond our walls. Let it be wild, that it may shake the cages we build around ourselves.

For poetry that is too safe, too neat, too polite will wither. But poetry that carries the barbaric, the vast, and the wild will live forever, because it speaks not only to the mind but to the untamed soul of humanity. Be bold, be fierce, be unafraid—and your poetry will roar with the power of life itself.