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Quotations on Poetry 161 Quotes Found The reason can only be this: heroic poetry depends on an heroic age, and an age is heroic because of what it is, not because of what it does. By the general process of epic poetry, I mean the way this form of art has constantly responded to the profound needs of the society in which it was made. But the gravest difficulty, and perhaps the most important, in poetry meant solely for recitation, is the difficulty of achieving verbal beauty, or rather of making verbal beauty tell. Epic poetry exhibits life in some great symbolic attitude. It cannot strictly be said to symbolize life itself, but always some manner of life. With Shakespeare and poetry, a new world was born. New dreams, new desires, a self consciousness was born. I desired to know to know myself in terms of the new standards set by these books. That's a wonderful change that's taken place, and so most poetry today is published, if not directly by the person, certainly by the enterprise of the poet himself, working with his friends. If we ask a vague question, such as, 'What is poetry?' we expect a vague answer, such as, 'Poetry is the music of words,' or 'Poetry is the linguistic correction of disorder.' That is what I did with Jack, and that's why he liked to do the readings with me because he knew I was there for him, and for our ability to blend the poetry and the music. Poetry; a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty. It takes most men five years to recover from a college education, and to learn that poetry is as vital to thinking as knowledge. Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another. I was always interested in French poetry sort of as a sideline to my own work, I was translating contemporary French poets. That kind of spilled out into translation as a way to earn money, pay for food and put bread on the table. Love is the poetry of the senses. Poetry is but another form of inquiry into the nature of phenomena, using with its own unique procedures and tools. In the past, poetry came in the form of spells and chants used to effect change. Any healthy man can go without food for two days - but not without poetry. Poetry and progress are like two ambitious men who hate one another with an instinctive hatred, and when they meet upon the same road, one of them has to give place. It is time to get drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of Time, get drunk; get drunk without stopping! On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you wish. Too many people in the modern world view poetry as a luxury, not a necessity like petrol. But to me it's the oil of life. Poetry fettered, fetters the human race. Nations are destroyed or flourish in proportion as their poetry, painting, and music are destroyed or flourish. My art and poetry is very political now. Because you've got to find that truth within you and express yourself. Somewhere out there, I know, there will be people who will listen. I found that it wasn't so oddball to like music and poetry and visual arts, they're kindred spirits. There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured, such as poetry, music, painting, public speaking. Poetry is that art which selects and arranges the symbols of thought in such a manner as to excite the imagination the most powerfully and delightfully. Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing. A man of eighty has outlived probably three new schools of painting, two of architecture and poetry and a hundred in dress. An age which is incapable of poetry is incapable of any kind of literature except the cleverness of a decadence. I'd always loved poetry and I'd always loved writing music and composing music, but I hadn't thought of putting the two together until around that time. Prior to Wordsworth, humor was an essential part of poetry. I mean, they don't call them Shakespeare comedies for nothing. Only in dreams, in poetry, in play do we sometimes arrive at what we were before we were this thing that, who knows, we are. I don't like to boast, but I have probably skipped more poetry than any other person of my age and weight in this country. Every so often I find some poems that are too good for the readers of The Atlantic because they are a little too involved with the nature of poetry, as such. But for me, being an editor I've been an editor of all kinds of books being an editor of poetry has been the way in which I could give a crucial part of my time to what I love most. Poetry asks people to have values, form opinions, care about some other part of experience besides making money and being successful on the job. I wrote some bad poetry that I published in North African journals, but even as I withdrew into this reading, I also led the life of a kind of young hooligan. When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music. Sometimes the beauty is easy. Sometimes you don't have to try at all. Sometimes you can hear the wind blow in a handshake. Sometimes there's poetry written right on the bathroom wall. In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite. I try to show what it is about language and music that enthralls, because I think those are the two elements of poetry. I was apprehensive. I feared every time I talked about poetry, it would be filtered through the lens of race, sex, and age. But in the finished art of the song the use of words has no connection with the use of words in poetry. Poetry being the sign of that which all men desire, even though the desire be unconscious, intensity of life or completeness of experience, the universality of its appeal is a matter of course. The musician - if he be a good one - finds his own perception prompted by the poet's perception, and he translates the expression of that perception from the terms of poetry into the terms of music. It's always good when women win things in fiction because it tends to be more male-dominated, unlike poetry, which is more equal. I guess the two Manifesto, Communicating Vessels, Mad Love, and some of his poetry made a significant mark on me but as far as bringing a literary element into the music I see it as a much broader assimilation. Poetry, the genre of purest beauty, was born of a truncated woman: her head severed from her body with a sword, a symbolic penis. The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all. As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug's game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing. Money is everywhere but so is poetry. What we lack are the poets. I don't know a better preparation for life than a love of poetry and a good digestion.
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