Why is poetry considered to be the most important knowledge of the Romantic period?

Since Romanticism stresses the importance of intuition and
emotion over the rational process, poetry is the best expression of the individual's
experience in the world, along with the individual's interpretations of this
experience.

With poetry, believed to be the highest form of
literature for the Romantic, the writer can most easily communicate his/her individual
expression as well as the concept of the "sublime," a thrilling experience that
unifies awe, magnificence, and horror. 

Such Romantic poets
as William Wordsworth, John Keats, William Blake, and Percy Bysshe Shelley, George
Gordon, Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge of England; and Victor Hugo, Alphonse de la
Martine, and Charles Baudelaire of France; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo
Emerson, and William Cullen Bryant of America clearly demonstrate the poetry that
emphasizes intuition over reason, and the pastoral over the urban; in addition, poetry
provides him the freedom of using a new language over the traditional forms.  Poetry,
for the Romantics was not a framed canvas as is a novel; rather, it was a tableau on
which they could paint in a much freer manner, expressing themselves in unconventional
ways.