Criticism

 In his work "The Critical Monism of Cleanth Brooks," R.S. Crane vehemently refutes Brooks' claim that paradox is essential. For one thing, Brooks disregards the other subtleties of imagination and power that poets add to their poems since he thinks that the fundamental structure of poetry is a paradox. Simply put, according to Brooks, "'imagination' reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities." By relying on the strawman of paradox, Brooks only speaks about the truth that poetry can expose and says nothing about the joy it can bring. Additionally, Brooks dismisses the importance of paradox in everyday speech and conversation, including scientific discourse—which Brooks said was in opposition to poetry—by describing poetry as having a structure of contradiction that is unique to it. According to Crane, following Brooks' definition of poetry, Einstein's formula E = mc2, which is a fundamental paradox in that matter and energy are the same thing, is the most potent paradoxical poem in contemporary history. Because it is a reductio ad absurdum, the argument for the centrality of paradox (and irony) is rendered useless (or at the very least ineffectual) for literary study.