7-Tradition and the Individual Talent

feelings=images, impressions; emotions=strings of feelings, events or experiences
the work, the poem itself as opposed to the poet
which is more beautiful: a poem about grand beauty, or the beauty in the everyday? (the progression of words and word-images, development of the subject)

As an aspiring writer myself, I of course model my works after what I've read before. When I read a fantastic story, I try to recreate it (my favorite inspiration is generally Borges; I like the way he makes the ordinary extraordinary). I like reading a fantastic story and finding out at the end it was simply something mundane that the author looked at through a different lens. Is what I write new and fantastic? No; it's traditional, modeled after a style I fancy at the moment, but it's new for me if it's a subject or style I've never come across before (some are good, some are pitiful attempts at greatness that fall far short) but even the stories that don't pass muster are part of the process, part of the cannon (in this case, my own personal canon) and each attempt changes forever the future forays into this style or that. Eliot is quite critical of writers, rather critics, who only look for what's new but how do you discern what is 'new' if you don't know what else is there?
I find that works that discuss the everyday and make it beautiful are my favorites. I read a poem once about a shiny metal goddess whose worshipers placed offerings in her belly and she gave them bread and cookies. The metal goddess was a Hobart mixer (like a Kitchen Aid mixer on your counter but the gigantic, industrial floor model). I'd never thought of working as a baker like that, and I've made my share of sheet cakes and loaves by the dozen in commercial kitchens, berating the choices that brought me into the heat of the kitchen, but jobs like that have a beauty of their own, too, if you know where to look. Not everybody goes to the Alps, so reading a poem about them may create images in my mind but only if very skillfully written. Most of us, even those who don't cook, at least know the machines that line the shelves at Target and Bed, Bath and Beyond and can picture the metal goddess in a new light next time you go shopping after reading that poem and find beauty in the every-day ordinary as it becomes extra-ordinary. How does a feeling become an emotion? Do you have to 'experience' the feeling often before it transforms itself or does it simply rise in intensity and recreate itself into the more solid designation of emotion? And who determines which it is? The poet, the poem or the reader? "Whoever has approved this idea of order, of the form of European, of English literature, will not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past". So every time I've ever poured ingredients into a mixing bowl, I was placing my offerings into the goddess who exchanged my gift into a gift for me. How wonderful it is to bake and be part of the fantastic ritual of feeding my loved ones! I had no idea how the exchange was part of a plan; I just thought I wanted a cookie. So now my feelings about working as a baker have been changed by words, exchanged the feelings I had years before I experienced the poem, and feelings become emotions attached to the action of creating yummy things from plain old boring ingredients.