What is "the Poetic Genius"?

Question

In ["All Religions are One"](https://www.glyndwr.ac.uk/rdover/blake/allrels1.htm), William Blake develops an argument around a concept called "the Poetic Genius". From the modern, surface meaning of the words, the Poetic Genius would seem to be the faculty of creating and/or appreciating and understanding poetry, or perhaps more broadly literature in general. But Blake also seems to identify the Poetic Genius with the soul and with a monotheistic God. What did Blake actually mean by "the Poetic Genius"?

Answer 1

Blake believes the Poetic Genius to be beyond simply a talent for poetry; he believed it to be a connection between a person's soul and what Romantics referred to as the sublime. The sublime referred to anything that was beyond words, anything that truly touched a person to their core, usually found in nature. Poetic Genius is the ability to tap into that sublime, and to convey it through words, with the understanding that words will never be sufficient. There is a concept, referred to as the Eolian Harp, which Blake would have been familiar with, as a Romantic poet. The Eolian Harp derives from a poem by Coleridge, and it refers to the idea that poets' souls are riding a breeze when they write poetry, and this breeze can be considered the Poetic Genius. In the poem, Coleridge refers to this breeze, and insists that poets are the harp on which the breeze plays, creating music-–that is, creating poetry. So, Poetic Genius is the act of translating that breeze by being an Eolian Harp and allowing the sublime to show through your work.