I’ve tried hard on several occasions to like poetry. Oh, I think I’ve started several posts with that phrase in fact. Here in lies a clue though to why I continue to fail. I’m trying to be “learned” in what I’m reading. Indeed, this is a requirement for the understanding of some poetry. But perhaps the very best stuff doesn’t need any background. In fact, trying to figure out what it’s about ruins it. I should already know this from seeing what constitutes beautiful music and songwriting: an open-ended meaning. Perhaps I should go back and approach poetry while just thinking about it less.
Therefore do we all in fact feel that pagan or primitive myths are infinitely suggestive, so long as we are wise enough not to inquire what they suggest. Therefore we all feel what is meant by Prometheus stealing fire from heaven, until some prig of a pessimist or progressive person explains what it means. Therefore we all know the meaning of Jack and the Beanstalk, until we are told. In this sense it is true that it is the ignorant who accept myths, but only because it is the ignorant who appreciate poems.
-G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man, p.124