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Is poetry a form of immitation, and is this 'natural'?

Aristotle: The birth of poetry

From: Aristotle, Poetics, tr. by S. H. Butcher  * Post a question / start a discussion at the Writing Forum

Art of communication Where's the Poet? show him! show him, Muses nine! that I may know him! 'Tis the man who with a man Is an equal, be he King Or poorest of the beggar-clan, Or any other wondrous thing A man may be 'twixt ape and Plato; 'Tis the man who with a bird, Wren or eagle, finds his way to All its instincts; he hath heard The lion's roaring, and can tell What his horny throat expresseth, And to him the tiger's yell Comes articulate and presseth On his ear like mother-tongue... John Keats, The Poet

Poetry in general seems to have sprung from two causes, each of them lying deep in our nature. First, the instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures, and through imitation learns his earliest lessons; and no less universal is the pleasure felt in things imitated. We have evidence of this in the facts of experience. Objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity: such as the forms of the most ignoble animals and of dead bodies. The cause of this again is, that to learn gives the liveliest pleasure, not only to philosophers but to men in general; whose capacity, however, of learning is more limited. Thus the reason why men enjoy seeing a likeness is, that in contemplating it they find themselves learning or inferring, and saying perhaps, 'Ah, that is he.' For if you happen not to have seen the original, the pleasure will be due not to the imitation as such, but to the execution, the coloring, or some such other cause. Imitation, then, is one instinct of our nature. Next, there is the instinct for 'harmony' and rhythm, meters being manifestly sections of rhythm. Persons, therefore, starting with this natural gift developed by degrees their special aptitudes, till their rude improvisations gave birth to Poetry.

Cf. Goethe on Tragedy (in German) | Aristotle Anthology | Rilke, Letter to a Young Poet | Plato, Whom are we talking to? | Kierkegaard, My work as an author | Emerson, Self-knowledge | Gibson - McRury, Discovering one's face | Emerson, We differ in art, not in wisdom