^^^^ CB: Is this Keats' issue in saying "Beauty is truth; truth beauty..." ?
^^^^^
That problem was Richards's point of departure to. He argued that we were possessed by contradictory feelings, and a poem resolved the tension that created. (I read this in the early & mid-50s & don't guarantee my accuracy.) He later, I think, argued that the "future" triumphs of neurology would provide evidence for this. (And got mocked for that by some of the new critics.) On the basis of a very brief conversation with Gabe Gudding, a poet in the English Dept here, I think _some _ contemporary poets are going back to Good Poetry Must be True position, and also rejecting all the major "Moderns."
I tend to argue that the only relation to "truth" and "goodness" a literary text (or for that matter, any text) needs is to raise interesting questions in an interesting way. (Sort of a superior "conversation piece."") And the only test of that is if a reasonable number of people continue to talk/write about the poem. NO VALUE JUDGMENT NEEDED. Not even a theory of 'value' in poetry; simply an empirical observation.
Carrol