An image is a concept backed by emotion or an emotion backed by a concept. It either provides a surface that grips and moves you, i.e., an emotional experience, or an appearance that you grasp to steady yourself, i.e., a conceptual experience.
Philosophy is conceptual notation; poetry is emotional notation. They are the means by which we bring our concepts and emotions to presence so that we may make them more precise, affording clear thinking and intense feeling.
They improve our contact with experience: from the facts to our beliefs about them, from our desires to the acts that live them out.
