A musical thought is one spoken by a mind that has penetrated into the inmost heart of the thing; detected the inmost mystery of it, namely the melody that lies hidden in it; the inward harmony of coherence which is its soul, whereby it exists, and has a right to be, here in this world.
—Thomas Carlyle, “The Hero as Poet”
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Conjectures At Random
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The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.
—Czeslaw Milosz, from “Ars Poetica?” in The Collected Poems: 1931-1987 (Ecco Press, 1988)
A commonplace book; repository of quotes related to poetry and art.
what's he building in there?
Conjectures At Random
Let us not conjecture at random about the greatest things.
—Heraclitus
musical thought
Labels:
coherence,
exists,
hidden,
melody,
mind,
musical thought,
right to be,
Thomas Carlyle
unread books
The art of tsundoku, which made you buy books that you wouldn't necessarily read, but that you just had to have. To have them there, not reading them, but so you were able to read other books in peace. [445]
—Rodrigo Fresán, The Remembered Past (Open Letter Books, 2022), translated by Will Vanderhyden
—Rodrigo Fresán, The Remembered Past (Open Letter Books, 2022), translated by Will Vanderhyden
Labels:
book buying,
books,
library,
reading
prose bewitched
Poetry is prose bewitched, a music made of visual thoughts, the sound of an idea.
—Mina Loy, “Modern Poetry” (1925), Toward the Open Field: Poets on the Art of Poetry, 1800-1959, edited by Melissa Kwasny.
Editor’s headnote: “Loy—promoter of futurism, feminism, and modernism—did not publish much criticism. Yet this essay, which appeared in Charm, a women’s fashion magazine, conveys the sense of literary life in New York in the middle of a revolution [modernism].
—Mina Loy, “Modern Poetry” (1925), Toward the Open Field: Poets on the Art of Poetry, 1800-1959, edited by Melissa Kwasny.
Editor’s headnote: “Loy—promoter of futurism, feminism, and modernism—did not publish much criticism. Yet this essay, which appeared in Charm, a women’s fashion magazine, conveys the sense of literary life in New York in the middle of a revolution [modernism].
Labels:
betwitched,
Mina Loy,
poetry is,
poetry v. prose,
prose,
sound,
visual
build eternity into a poem
[David Wojahn says this was written on the back of an envelope by the poet Larry Levis, so I've tried to lay it out in that way, and the punctuation is based on my hearing Wojahn read these words.]
I think I might build eternity
into a poem one brick, one
brush of the pen at a time.
An argument against one
contradiction or the next,
until it stares out like the
sphinx past everyone but me.
After all I wrote it. I'm
forty-seven. My mind,
my thought, have never felt
so passionate, so shapely,
or as free of ideologies.
Poetry underwrites
consideration of all else.
I am what made me. I am not.
—Larry Levis, a statement read by David Wojahn in the documentary A Late Style of Fire
I think I might build eternity
into a poem one brick, one
brush of the pen at a time.
An argument against one
contradiction or the next,
until it stares out like the
sphinx past everyone but me.
After all I wrote it. I'm
forty-seven. My mind,
my thought, have never felt
so passionate, so shapely,
or as free of ideologies.
Poetry underwrites
consideration of all else.
I am what made me. I am not.
—Larry Levis, a statement read by David Wojahn in the documentary A Late Style of Fire
incidental happiness
Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it; but likely enough it is gone the moment we say to ourselves, “Here it is!” like the chest of gold that treasure-seekers find.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne, Passages from the American Note-Books (1879)
—Nathaniel Hawthorne, Passages from the American Note-Books (1879)
Labels:
happiness,
Nathaniel Hawthorne
quicker that way too
I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so.
—Sydney Smith (1771-1845), essayist and clergyman, quoted by Hesketh Pearson in The Smith of Smiths: Being the Life, Wit and Humour of Sydney Smith (1934)
—Sydney Smith (1771-1845), essayist and clergyman, quoted by Hesketh Pearson in The Smith of Smiths: Being the Life, Wit and Humour of Sydney Smith (1934)
Labels:
book reviews,
Hesketh Pearson,
humor,
reviewers,
Sydney Smith,
wit
no keys
The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.
—Czeslaw Milosz, from “Ars Poetica?” in The Collected Poems: 1931-1987 (Ecco Press, 1988)
Labels:
Czeslaw Milosz,
guests,
house,
keys,
purpose
under one small star
Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.
[…]
My apologies to great questions for small answers.
Couple of lines from the poem “Under One Small Star” by Wislawa Szymborska, translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh
[…]
My apologies to great questions for small answers.
Couple of lines from the poem “Under One Small Star” by Wislawa Szymborska, translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh
Labels:
answers,
flowers,
home,
philosophy,
Polish poetry,
questions,
wars,
Wislawa Szymborska
to see a soul
“Quem não vê bem uma palavra, não pode ver bem uma alma."
"One who cannot see a word well, cannot see a soul well."
—Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935)
"One who cannot see a word well, cannot see a soul well."
—Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935)
Labels:
Fernando Pessoa,
soul,
word
beginning and end
The beginning and end of all literary activity is the reproduction of the world that surrounds me by means of the world that is in me, all things being grasped, related, recreated, moulded, and reconstructed in a personal form and original manner.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 to 1832)
[A favorite quote of the Edward Hopper who said it applied equally to painting.]
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 to 1832)
[A favorite quote of the Edward Hopper who said it applied equally to painting.]
Labels:
art is,
Goethe,
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
original manner,
self,
world
critic struck dumb
To create a work of art that the critic cannot even talk about ought to be the artist’s chief concern.
—John Ashbery, Art News, May 1972
—John Ashbery, Art News, May 1972
Labels:
art,
aspiration,
critic,
John Ashbery
threadbare language
How threadbare the language of happiness!
—Osip Mandelstam, from poem “Tristia,” Osip Mandelstam: The Eyesight of Wasps (Ohio State U. Press, 1989), translated by James Greene
—Osip Mandelstam, from poem “Tristia,” Osip Mandelstam: The Eyesight of Wasps (Ohio State U. Press, 1989), translated by James Greene
Labels:
happiness,
language,
Osip Mandelstam,
threadbare
speaking voice
My voice excites me, my pen never.
—Margaret Fuller quoted in this review of Bright Circle Five Remarkable Women in the Age of Transcendentalism
—Margaret Fuller quoted in this review of Bright Circle Five Remarkable Women in the Age of Transcendentalism
sleepy family habits
Miss Stein is bringing back life to our language by what appears, at first, to be an anarchic process. First she breaks down the predestined groups of words, their sleepy family habits; then she rebrightens them, examines their texture, and builds them into new and vital shapes.
—Edith Sitwell, Poetry and Criticism (Hogarth Essays No.11, Hogarth Press, 1925)
—Edith Sitwell, Poetry and Criticism (Hogarth Essays No.11, Hogarth Press, 1925)
Labels:
Edith Sitwell,
family habits,
Gertrude Stein,
shapes,
sleepy,
words
poems are lumps
Poems are lumps—physical entities. This does not mean, of course, that they are not about something—the complete dependence of all the paths, the threads, time-space, History, the Social. And the more unrestrainedly the poet gives himself up to the materiality, the more precisely these lumps give off the quality of his conscious effort, of his opinions and ideas. Which is far more interesting than the opinions and ideas themselves—only physical submission shows how long the succession is, demonstrates their real drama.
—Per Kirkeby, “Painterly Poetry,” Selected Essays from Bravura (Van Abbemuseum, 1982)
—Per Kirkeby, “Painterly Poetry,” Selected Essays from Bravura (Van Abbemuseum, 1982)
Labels:
about,
art and poetry,
artist quote,
materiality,
opnions,
Per Kirkeby,
physical,
poem is
perfect title
I hit upon Edwin Arlington Robinson’s beautiful and powerful poem “Ben Jonson Entertains a Man From Stratford,” a philosophical and critical monologue in the grand manner which I have read, I imagine, at least thirty times, and then I read again Robinson’s “The Man Against the Sky,” a poem with so perfect a title that you foreknow all it will contain.
—Burton Rascoe, A Bookman’s Daybook (Horace Liveright, 1929), edited by C. Hartley Gratton [79]
—Burton Rascoe, A Bookman’s Daybook (Horace Liveright, 1929), edited by C. Hartley Gratton [79]
Labels:
Ben Jonson,
Burton Rascoe,
E.A. Robinson,
grand manner,
monologue,
philosophical,
title
reading the world
My way of knowing experience is to formulate a metaphor which describes or encapsulates a particular moment; it is a way of getting at the truth. And a way of paying attention, of reading the world.
—Mark Doty, Heaven’s Coast: A Memoir (Harper Perennial, 1996)
—Mark Doty, Heaven’s Coast: A Memoir (Harper Perennial, 1996)
most accurate instrument
To speak of Poetry is to speak of the most subtle, the most delicate, and most accurate instrument by which to measure Life.
H.T. Tobias A. Wright's introduction to the Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke (1918), translated by Jessie Lamont.
H.T. Tobias A. Wright's introduction to the Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke (1918), translated by Jessie Lamont.
Labels:
accuracy,
delicate,
H.T. Tobias A. Wright,
life,
poetry is,
Rainer Maria Rilke,
subtle
skeleton architecture
And where that language does not yet exist, it is our poetry which helps to fashion it. Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before
—Audre Lorde, “Poetry Is Not A Luxury” (1977)
—Audre Lorde, “Poetry Is Not A Luxury” (1977)
Labels:
architecture,
Audre Lorde,
bridge,
foundation,
life,
skeleton
sentence diagram
Then teacher would draw lines that tied various parts of her sentence together, “at the door” descending like a staircase from its noun. This moment made me happy. I was perhaps the only student in the class who relished diagramming; who could while away a happy hour picturing predicates docking at the ports of their subjects like ships. Levels one through six were called grammar schools then, attesting to the importance once placed upon the subject.
—William Gass, “The Aesthetic Structure of the Sentence,” Life Sentences: Literary Judgements and Accounts (Alfred A. Knopf, 2012)
—William Gass, “The Aesthetic Structure of the Sentence,” Life Sentences: Literary Judgements and Accounts (Alfred A. Knopf, 2012)
Labels:
grammar,
school,
sentence,
sentence diagraming,
sentence structure,
staircase,
William Gass
right to ask
Every poem has the right to ask for a new poetics.
—Anna Swir, Talking to My Body (Copper Canyon Press, 1996), translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan
—Anna Swir, Talking to My Body (Copper Canyon Press, 1996), translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan
Labels:
Anna Swir,
new,
poetics,
Polish poetry
lowly potato
If you can get to its essence, even a lowly potato would be poetic.
—Jayanta Mahapatra, “Of the Lowly Potato: Indian English Poetry Today” (2001)
—Jayanta Mahapatra, “Of the Lowly Potato: Indian English Poetry Today” (2001)
Labels:
essence,
Indian poetry,
Jayanta Mahapatra,
poetic,
potato,
thing
incomplete life
I wanted to signal that My Life was an incomplete work, a Bildungs-poem (or Bildungsgedicht) that cannot fully (or successfully) account for itself. In addition, I wanted to suggest that incompleteness might, and maybe should, be an attribute of any text.
—Lyn Hejinian, “What’s Missing from My Life," The Grand Piano: Part 9 (Mode A/This Press, 2009)
—Lyn Hejinian, “What’s Missing from My Life," The Grand Piano: Part 9 (Mode A/This Press, 2009)
Labels:
account,
attribute,
bildungs,
incomplete,
language poetry,
Lyn Hejinian
failed harvest
…the conquest of the public imagination by the arts, by “art as a way of life,” has reinforced the natural resistance of the mind to ordinary logic, order, and precision, without replacing these with any strong dose of artistic logic, order, and precision. The arts have simply given universal warrant to the offbeat, the intelligible, the defiant without purpose. The schools have soaked up this heady brew. Anything new, obscure, implausible, self-willed is worth trying out, is an educational experiment. Soon, the pupil comes to think that anything unformed, obscure, slovenly he may do is validated by art’s contempt for tradition, correctness, and sense.
[…]
Nothing is right by virtue of its origins, but only by virtue of its results. A stifling tradition is bad and a “great” tradition is good. Innovation that brings improvement is what we all desire; innovation that impoverishes the mind and the chances of life is damnable.
[…]
But nowadays we despise the very word cultivation. I admit that unweeded soil grows wondrous things, which nobody can predict. And these things have an abundance. But it would be a rash man who would call it a harvest.
—Jacques Barzun, “The Centrality of Reading,” The Written Word (Newbury House Publishers, 1971)
[…]
Nothing is right by virtue of its origins, but only by virtue of its results. A stifling tradition is bad and a “great” tradition is good. Innovation that brings improvement is what we all desire; innovation that impoverishes the mind and the chances of life is damnable.
[…]
But nowadays we despise the very word cultivation. I admit that unweeded soil grows wondrous things, which nobody can predict. And these things have an abundance. But it would be a rash man who would call it a harvest.
—Jacques Barzun, “The Centrality of Reading,” The Written Word (Newbury House Publishers, 1971)
Labels:
arts,
cultivation,
harvest,
innovation,
Jacques Barzun,
logic,
order,
pedagogy,
precision,
reading,
teaching,
tradition
tears and laughter
[Great humour] is no longer dependent upon the mere trick and quibble of words, or the odd and meaningless incongruities in things that strike us as “funny”. Its basis lies in the deeper contrasts offered by life itself: the strange incongruity between our aspiration and our achievement, the eager and fretful anxieties of to-day that fade into nothingness to-morrow, the burning pain and the sharp sorrow that are softened in the gentle retrospect of time, till as we look back upon the course that has been traversed we pass in view the panorama of our lives, as people in old age may recall, with mingled tears and smiles, the angry quarrels of their childhood. And here, in its larger aspect, humour is blended with pathos till the two are one, and represent, as they have in every age, the mingled heritage of tears and laughter that is our lot on earth.
—Stephen Leacock, Humour as I See It (Eris pamphlet, no date; first published in 1916 in Maclean’s)
—Stephen Leacock, Humour as I See It (Eris pamphlet, no date; first published in 1916 in Maclean’s)
Labels:
achievement,
aspiration,
contrasts,
humor,
incongruity,
laughter,
panorama,
pathos,
Stephen Leacock,
tears
supposed person
When I state myself as the Representative of the Verse—it does not mean—me—but a supposed person.
—Emily Dickinson, letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1862
—Emily Dickinson, letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1862
Labels:
Emily Dickinson,
I-lyric,
person,
self,
speaker
for example jujubes
[Frank O'Hara] also mentioned a lot of things just because he liked them—for example jujubes. Some of these things had not appeared before in poetry. His poetry contained aspirin tablets, Good Teeth buttons, and water pistols. His poems were full of passion and life; they weren't trivial because small things were called in them by name.
—Kenneth Koch, "A Note on Frank O'Hara in the Early Fifties," Audit (1964)
—Kenneth Koch, "A Note on Frank O'Hara in the Early Fifties," Audit (1964)
Labels:
aspirin,
Frank O'Hara,
jujubes,
passion,
small things,
trivial,
water pistols
stopped by a poet
It never occurred to me that I wasn’t going to write poetry until I read Wallace Stevens. When I was very young, reading Shakespeare and Blake and Keats, or when, in adolescence, I began reading Yeats and Eliot and Pound, my experience of reading invariably strengthened an existing sense of vocation. Because this experience, the fact that reading great poets increased my confidence, never varied, I had no reason to examine it. Then something completely different happened; then a door was shut very sharply. Reading Stevens, I felt I would never write, and because I didn’t want this to be true, I had to look more closely at those early experiences, and at the new, to find the source of the verdict.
—Louise Glück, “Invitation and Exclusion,” Proofs & Theories: Essays on Poetry (Ecco, 1994)
—Louise Glück, “Invitation and Exclusion,” Proofs & Theories: Essays on Poetry (Ecco, 1994)
Labels:
block,
door,
Louise Glück,
vocation,
Wallace Stevens,
youth
calm forms
Still others owe their beauty to human violence: the push toppling them from their pedestals or the iconoclast’s hammer has made them what they are. The classical work of art is thus infused with pathos: the mutilated gods have the air of martyrs. Sometimes, erosion of the elements and the brutality of man unite to create an unwonted appearance which belongs to no school or time: headless and armless, separated from her recently discovered hand, worn away by all the squalls of the Sporades, the Victory of Samothrace has become not so much a woman as pure sea-wind and sky.
[…]
A world of violence turns about these calm forms.
—Margeurite Yourcenar, title essay of That Might Sculptor, Time (FSG, 1992), translation by Walter Kaiser.
[…]
A world of violence turns about these calm forms.
—Margeurite Yourcenar, title essay of That Might Sculptor, Time (FSG, 1992), translation by Walter Kaiser.
sortit à cinq heures
Poet and critic Paul Valéry once remarked that he could never write a novel because he would have to write sentences like, ‘The Marquis left at five’.
[n.b.: I ran across this anecdote again recently in David Markson's Reader's Block. The above is a paraphrase of his entry.]
[n.b.: I ran across this anecdote again recently in David Markson's Reader's Block. The above is a paraphrase of his entry.]
Labels:
information,
novel,
Paul Valéry,
poetry v. prose,
prose
looking vs. seeing
What this exercise [spend a full 3 hours in front of a painting, recording your observations] shows students is that just because you have looked at something doesn’t mean that you have seen it. Just because something is available instantly to vision does not mean that it is available instantly to consciousness. Or, in slightly more general terms: access is not synonymous with learning. What turns access into learning is time and strategic patience.
The art historian David Joselit has described paintings as deep reservoirs of temporal experience—“time batteries”—“exorbitant stockpiles” of experience and information. I would suggest that the same holds true for anything a student might want to study at Harvard University—a star, a sonnet, a chromosome. There are infinite depths of information at any point in the students’ education. They just need to take the time to unlock that wealth.
—Jennifer L. Roberts, "The Power of Patience"
Teaching students the value of deceleration and immersive attention
The art historian David Joselit has described paintings as deep reservoirs of temporal experience—“time batteries”—“exorbitant stockpiles” of experience and information. I would suggest that the same holds true for anything a student might want to study at Harvard University—a star, a sonnet, a chromosome. There are infinite depths of information at any point in the students’ education. They just need to take the time to unlock that wealth.
—Jennifer L. Roberts, "The Power of Patience"
Teaching students the value of deceleration and immersive attention
Labels:
art history,
art quote,
David Joselit,
information,
Jennifer Roberts,
looking,
observation,
patience,
seeing,
time,
time batteries
things begin to appear
My poems (in the beginning) are like a table on which one places interesting things one has found on one's walks: a pebble, a rusty nail, a strangely shaped root, the corner of a torn photograph, etc. ... where after months of looking at them and thinking about them daily, certain surprising relationships, which hint at meanings, begin to appear. These objets trouvés of poetry are, of course, bits of language. The poem is the place where one hears what the language is really saying, where the full meaning of words begins to emerge. That's not quite right! It's not so much what the words mean that is crucial, but rather, what they show and reveal.
—Charles Simic, "Notes on Poetry and Philosophy," Wonderful Words, Silent Truth (Poets on Poetry series, U. of Michigan Press, 1990)
—Charles Simic, "Notes on Poetry and Philosophy," Wonderful Words, Silent Truth (Poets on Poetry series, U. of Michigan Press, 1990)
Labels:
Charles Simic,
composition
essential things
Yeats saw the things of this world differently; he was an essentialist. In the men and the women he knew—both those he loved and those he hated—as well as in swans, hares, swords, and towers, he spied some changeless and irreducible essence. He was a Realist in the medieval sense. He believed that universals are real, that those abstract terms by which we categorize entities—Man or Woman, Beauty or Liberty, Swan or Goose—possess the fullest measure of genuine existence in sone suprasensual realm, and that the earthly embodiments of these transcendent archetypes are but momentary instantiations.
—Eric Ormsby, “Passionate Syntax,” Fine Incisions: Essays on Poetry and Place (The Porcupine Quill, 2011)
—Eric Ormsby, “Passionate Syntax,” Fine Incisions: Essays on Poetry and Place (The Porcupine Quill, 2011)
Labels:
abstraction,
archetype,
Eric Ormsby,
essence,
existence,
transcendent,
W. B. Yeats
community of objectives
It is the poet and philosopher who provide the community of objectives in which the artist participates. Their chief preoccupation, like the artist, is the expression in concrete form of their notions of reality. Like him, they deal with verities of time and space, life and death, and the heights of exaltation as well as the depths of despair. The preoccupation with these eternal problems creates a common ground which transcends the disparity in the means used to achieve them.
—Mark Rothko, The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art (Yale Univ. Press, 2012)
—Mark Rothko, The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art (Yale Univ. Press, 2012)
Labels:
artist,
common ground,
despair,
exaltation,
Mark Rothko,
philosopher,
poet,
reality,
verities
language like pigments
it is easier now to follow the inner flow beneath these scraps of language, to appreciate the simple clarity of the sentences he has constructed, to recognize that these meditations (for they have never been anything else) move not in the manner of events or in the manner of a river or in the manner, either, of thought, or in the “happy hour” fashion of the told tale (each brought so beautifully together in “Boat Trip,” one of the triumphs of Walser’s art), but in the way of an almost inarticulate metaphysical feeling; a response to the moves and meanings of both human life and nature, which is purged of every local note and self-interested particularity and which achieves, like the purest poetry, an understanding mix of longing, appreciation, and despair, as if they were the pigments composing a color to lay down upon the surface of something passing—sweetly regretful—like the fall of light upon a bit of lost water, or a gleam caught in a fold of twilit snow, as if it were going to remain there forever.
—William Gass, “Robert Walser,” Finding A Form: Essays (Knopf, 1996)
—William Gass, “Robert Walser,” Finding A Form: Essays (Knopf, 1996)
event not record
A poem is an event, not a record of an event.
—Robert Lowell
Quoted in Robert Lowell: Interviews and Memoirs (U. of Michigan Press, 1988), edited by Jeffrey Meyers, 304.
—Robert Lowell
Quoted in Robert Lowell: Interviews and Memoirs (U. of Michigan Press, 1988), edited by Jeffrey Meyers, 304.
Labels:
event,
poem is,
record,
remark,
Robert Lowell
instead of blindly stumbling
What produces all philosophical treatises and poems and scriptures is the struggle of Life to become divinely conscious of itself instead of blindly stumbling hither and thither in the line of least resistance.
—George Bernard Shaw, Epigrams of Bernard Shaw (Haldeman-Julius Co., 1925)
—George Bernard Shaw, Epigrams of Bernard Shaw (Haldeman-Julius Co., 1925)
Labels:
divinely conscious,
George Bernard Shaw,
life,
stumbling
by indirect means
The relationship between an artist and reality is always an oblique one, and indeed there is no good art which is not consciously oblique. If you respect the reality of the world, you know that you can only approach that reality by indirect means.
—Richard Wilbur, Quarterly Review of Literature, 7, p.189
—Richard Wilbur, Quarterly Review of Literature, 7, p.189
what a pity
Sometimes, looking at the many books I have at home, I feel I shall die before I come to the end of them, yet I cannot resist the temptation of buying new books. Whenever I walk into a bookstore and find a book on one of my hobbies—for example, Old English or Old Norse poetry—I say to myself, “What a pity I can’t buy that book, for I already have a copy at home."
―Jorge Luis Borges, This Craft of Verse (Harvard Univ. Press, 2000)
―Jorge Luis Borges, This Craft of Verse (Harvard Univ. Press, 2000)
Labels:
books,
buying books,
Jorge Luis Borges,
library,
Old English,
personal library,
temptation
straightforward and quirky
There was a savior who rescued me from the Romantic complexities and showed me that I could love poetry in English: Carl Sandburg, my first American poet. He was quite popular at the time, and a classmate introduced me to one of his volumes. Here were poems I could understand, written in free verse, in plain, idiomatic American English. They were straightforward and, at the same time, quirky and mysterious. Their spirit was democratic and deeply humane...
—Lisel Mueller, First Loves: Poets Introduce the Essential Poems That Captivated and Inspired Them (Simon & Schuster, 2000), edited by Carmela Ciuraru.
—Lisel Mueller, First Loves: Poets Introduce the Essential Poems That Captivated and Inspired Them (Simon & Schuster, 2000), edited by Carmela Ciuraru.
Labels:
Carl Sandburg,
democratic,
free verse,
humane,
Lisel Mueller,
plain,
quirky,
romantic
trope and scheme
The study of rhetoric distinguishes between tropes, or figures of meaning such as metaphor and metonymy, and schemes, or surface patterns of words. Poetry is a matter of trope; and verse, of scheme or design.
—John Hollander, Rhyme's Reason
—John Hollander, Rhyme's Reason
Labels:
definition,
design,
distinction,
John Hollander,
metaphor,
poetry is,
scheme,
trope,
verse is
education in public
Allen Tate said, describing his own critical essays, “I simply conducted my education in public.”
Quoted in “The Exercise of Reverence,” Essays on Poetry (Dalkey Archive Press, 2003) by Ralph J. Mills, Jr.
Quoted in “The Exercise of Reverence,” Essays on Poetry (Dalkey Archive Press, 2003) by Ralph J. Mills, Jr.
Labels:
Allen Tate,
critical approach,
criticism,
education,
Jr.,
public,
Ralph J. Mills
harem of words
He kept as it were a harem of words, to which he was constant and absolutely faithful. Some he favoured more than others, but he neglected none. He used them more often out of compliment than of necessity.
—Edward Thomas, speaking of Swinburne, Algernon Charles Swinburne: A Critical Study (Mitchell Kennerley, 1912)
—Edward Thomas, speaking of Swinburne, Algernon Charles Swinburne: A Critical Study (Mitchell Kennerley, 1912)
Labels:
Algernon Charles Swinburne,
compliment,
Edward Thomas,
harem,
necessity,
vocabulary,
words
each word
In a poem, each word has to be right and contribute to the whole; in a story only every sentence. In a novel only every page.
—Alison Laurie, Real People (Penguin, 1978)
—Alison Laurie, Real People (Penguin, 1978)
Labels:
Alison Laurie,
contribute,
novel,
page,
poetry v. prose,
right word,
sentence,
short story,
word
more fully in verse
Poetry. Perhaps I can express more fully in verse ideas and emotions which run counter to the inert crystallized opinions—hard as rock—which the vast body of men have vested interests in supporting.
—Thomas Hardy
[Notebook entry, 17 October 1896]
—Thomas Hardy
[Notebook entry, 17 October 1896]
Labels:
emotion,
opinion,
poetry v. prose,
rock,
Thomas Hardy
poems of anonymous
When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Brontë who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.
—Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own (1929)
—Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own (1929)
Labels:
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neglect,
novelist,
Virginia Woolf,
women,
women's poetry,
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no echoes
Slowly from nice neat letters;
doing things well
is more important than doing them.
--
Wake up singers!
Time for the echoes to end
and the voices to begin.
--
Quarreler, boxer
fight it out with the wind.
It’s not the fundamental I
that the poet is searching for
but the essential you.
—Antonio Machado, There is No Road (White Pine Press, 2003), Mary G. Berg and Dennis Maloney translators.
doing things well
is more important than doing them.
--
Wake up singers!
Time for the echoes to end
and the voices to begin.
--
Quarreler, boxer
fight it out with the wind.
It’s not the fundamental I
that the poet is searching for
but the essential you.
—Antonio Machado, There is No Road (White Pine Press, 2003), Mary G. Berg and Dennis Maloney translators.
bars of gold thrown ringing
[Commenting on a stanza from Shelley’s poem “Laon and Cyntha"]
The rhythm is varied and troubled, and the lines, which are in Spenser like bars of gold thrown ringing one upon another, are broken capriciously. Nor is the meaning the less an aspiration of the indolent muses, for it wanders hither and thither at the beckoning of fancy. It is now busy with a meteor and now with throbbing blood that is fire, and with a mist that is a swoon and a sleep that is life. It is bound together by the vaguest suggestion, while Spenser’s verse is always rushing on to some preordained thought.
—W. B. Yeats, “Edmund Spenser,” Selected Criticism and Prose (Macmillian, 1980)
The rhythm is varied and troubled, and the lines, which are in Spenser like bars of gold thrown ringing one upon another, are broken capriciously. Nor is the meaning the less an aspiration of the indolent muses, for it wanders hither and thither at the beckoning of fancy. It is now busy with a meteor and now with throbbing blood that is fire, and with a mist that is a swoon and a sleep that is life. It is bound together by the vaguest suggestion, while Spenser’s verse is always rushing on to some preordained thought.
—W. B. Yeats, “Edmund Spenser,” Selected Criticism and Prose (Macmillian, 1980)
Labels:
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Edmond Spenser,
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gold bars,
Percy Bysshe Shelley,
poetic line,
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incurable and infectious malady
“As you will," said the barber; "but what are we to do with these little books that are left?"
"These must be, not chivalry, but poetry," said the curate; and opening one he saw it was the "Diana" of Jorge de Montemayor, and, supposing all the others to be of the same sort, "these," he said, "do not deserve to be burned like the others, for they neither do nor can do the mischief the books of chivalry have done, being books of entertainment that can hurt no one."
"Ah, senor!" said the niece, "your worship had better order these to be burned as well as the others; for it would be no wonder if, after being cured of his chivalry disorder, my uncle, by reading these, took a fancy to turn shepherd and range the woods and fields singing and piping; or, what would be still worse, to turn poet, which they say is an incurable and infectious malady."
Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1605), Chapter VI: “Of the diverting and important scrutiny which the curate and the barber made in the library of our ingenious gentleman”
"These must be, not chivalry, but poetry," said the curate; and opening one he saw it was the "Diana" of Jorge de Montemayor, and, supposing all the others to be of the same sort, "these," he said, "do not deserve to be burned like the others, for they neither do nor can do the mischief the books of chivalry have done, being books of entertainment that can hurt no one."
"Ah, senor!" said the niece, "your worship had better order these to be burned as well as the others; for it would be no wonder if, after being cured of his chivalry disorder, my uncle, by reading these, took a fancy to turn shepherd and range the woods and fields singing and piping; or, what would be still worse, to turn poet, which they say is an incurable and infectious malady."
Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1605), Chapter VI: “Of the diverting and important scrutiny which the curate and the barber made in the library of our ingenious gentleman”
Labels:
becoming a poet,
book burning,
books,
Don Quixote,
library,
Miguel de Cervantes,
mischief,
poet is,
poetry books,
shepherd
tale not teller
Source of Lawrence's oft-quoted remark: ‘Never trust the teller, trust the tale’ or ‘Trust the tale, not the teller’…
The artist usually sets out—or used to—to point a moral and adorn a tale. The tale, however, points the other way as a rule. Two blankly opposing morals, the artist's and the tale's. Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.
—D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature (Thomas Seltzer, Inc., 1923), p. 3.
The artist usually sets out—or used to—to point a moral and adorn a tale. The tale, however, points the other way as a rule. Two blankly opposing morals, the artist's and the tale's. Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.
—D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature (Thomas Seltzer, Inc., 1923), p. 3.
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A commonplace book; repository of quotes related to poetry and art.
what's he building in there?
—Tom Waits
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Boris Pasternak
borrow
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Brion Gysin
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Burton Rascoe
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C. Day Lewis
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calculus
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César Vallejo
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Charles Bukowski
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chasing
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church
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cows
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crow
crown
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cunning. fatherland
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Czeslaw Milosz
D.H. Lawrence
dada
daily lives
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Daniel Aaron
Dante
dark
dark things
darkness
David Bowie
David Ignatow
David Joselit
dead
dead poets
death
decay
deep down things
defamiliarization
defense of poetry
definition
definition of poetry
deformity
delicate
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Delmore Schwartz
democratic
Denise Levertov
derive
description
design
despair
destiny
destruction
devouring
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diction
dictionary
difficulty
digital literature
direction
dirge
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discover
discovery
discrimination
disenchant
disgusting
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distillation
distinction
diverse
divine art
divinely conscious
domes
Don Quixote
Donald Justice
door
doubt
dramatic function
dream poem
drinking
duende
durable
dust
Dylan Thomas
E. B. White
E. H. Gombrich
E. M. Cioran
E.A. Robinson
ear
earth
ease
Eavan Boland
eclectic
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Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Degas
Edith Sitwell
Edmond Spenser
Eduardo Galeano
educate
education
Edward Burns-Jones
Edward Thomas
effort
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elemental forms
elephants
Elias Canetti
Elizabeth Bishop
emcompass
Emily Dickinson
eminent Victorians
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end
energy
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English
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epic
epitaph
Eric Ormsby
erosion
erotic
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error
escape
essence
essential
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et in arcardia ego
ethics
ethos
etymologist
etymology
Eugenio Montale
event
Evgény Abrámovitch Baratýnsky
evocativeness
exact
exaltation
excitement
execution
exhausted
exile
existence
existent
exists
experience
explain
explanation
explicit
expression
eye
Ezra Pound
fables
fact
factory
facts
fairy-land
fallow
falsehood
familiar
family habits
fancy
fantasy
farmers
fashion
favorite poems
favorite poets
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Federico Garcia Lorca
feeling
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Fernando Pessoa
fiction
field of study
figure
film
fin de siècle
fine excess
finish
finished
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first person
first poems
first poetry
first speech
flaw
flowers
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flying
folly
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footnotes
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Ford Madox Ford
forgetfulness
form
forms
formula
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fragments
framing
Francis Bacon
Frank O'Hara
Franz Kafka
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free
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Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Schlegel
friend
frost
frozen sea
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function
furniture
future
G. K. Chesterton
G.H.W. Rylands
G.W.F. Hegel
Gabriela Mistral
galaxy
Gaston Bachelard
gaudiness
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gentlemen
Geoffrey Moore
George Bernard Shaw
George Oppen
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George Seferis
Georgia O'Keeffe
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Gertrude Stein
get it right
gewgaw
ghosts
Giacomo Leopardi
gift
God
Goethe
gold
gold bars
good poetry
grail
grammar
grand manner
grasp
gratitude
gray
great poem
great poet
great themes
great writer
Greek art
Greek poetry
grief
group
guests
Guillaume Apollinaire
Guy Davenport
H.T. Tobias A. Wright
habit
hackwork
haiku
half
happiness
harem
harmonic
harmonious
Harold Bloom
harvest
Hayden Carruth
head
hear
heart
Heather McHugh
Helen Vendler
Henry David Thoreau
Henry James
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Heraclitus
Herbert Read
Herman Melville
hermeneutics
Hesketh Pearson
hidden
hidden place
history
home
Homer
hometown
honors
Horace
horizon
horrible
house
how does it mean
Howard Nemerov
human
human existence
humane
humor
hunger
I-lyric
iconclast
idea
ideal reader
ideas
idiosyncratic
idolatry
ignorance
image
imagery
images
imagination
imitate
immediacy
immortal
impact
imperfect
improvement
impulse
include
income
incomplete
incongruity
independence
indeterminate
Indian poetry
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influence
information
infusion
ingenutiy
injured
inner
inner workings
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inorganic
inscription
insouciance
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instant
insular
integrity
intellect
intellectual
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interpretation
interview
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invent
invention
Ireland
iridescent
Irish poetry
Italian poetry
Ivor Winters
J. S. Mill
J.M. Coetzee
J.V. Cunningham
Jack Gilbert
Jacques Barzun
Jacques Maritain
James Dickey
James Joyce
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Jane Hirshfield
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JF
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Jorge Luis Borges
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Josephine Jacobsen
Josiah Royce
joy
Jr.
Juan Ramón Jiménez
judgment
jujubes
Jules Supervielle
Justus Buchler
Kenneth Rexroth
Kenneth Yasuda
key
key phrases
keys
kintsugi
knights
knowledge
label
labor
laborious
landscape
landscapes
language
language game
language poetry
last line
lasting things
Latin
Latin Poetry
Latinate vocabulary
laughter
Laura Riding
law of errors
leave off
length
Leonard Cohen
library
life
life of the poet
light
limit
line
line break
line ending
lineage
lines
Lisel Mueller
list making
lists
literal
literary anecdote
literature
lives of the artists
lives of the poets
living
living thing
logic
long line
long poem
longing
Longinus
looking
lost
lost languages
Louis Aragon
Louis MacNeice
Louis Sullivan
Louis Zukofsky
Louise Bogan
Louise Glück
love
love poetry
lover
Lu Ji
Lucian Blaga
Lucian of Samosata
Ludwig Wittgenstein
luxury
Lyn Hejinian
lyric
lyric poetry
lyrical
M.C. Richards
machine
madness
magic
magnitude
Magyars
majesty
make
make it new
maker
making
man from porlock
mannerism
Margaret Fuller
Margeurite Yourcenar
marginalia
Marianne Moore
Marina Tsvetaeva
Marjorie Agosin
Mark Doty
Mark Leidner
Mark Rothko
Martial
martyrs
master
material
materiality
mathematics
matter
Matthew Arnold
Max Jacob
Maya
meaning
means
media
melody
Melville Cane
memoir
memorizing poems
memory
mentally prepared
metaphor
metaphors
metaphysical
meter
method
Meyer Schapiro
Michael Oakeshott
Michelangelo
Miguel de Cervantes
Miltonic
Mina Loy
mind
minor poet
Mira Rosenthal
mischief
mise en scène
misprint
model
modern
modernism
modest
Molière
moment
momentary
money
monk
monologue
moral
motion
motto
movie
multidimensional
multiplicity
multum in parvo
Muriel Rukeyser
muses
music
musical setting
musical thought
mysteries
mystery
myth
mythopoeic
mythos
myths
name
nameless
naming
narcissism
narrative business
Nathaniel Hawthorne
natural
naturalist
naturally
nature
Nazim Hikmet
necessity
need
negation
negative capability
neglect
nerve
new
new poetry
newness
news
newspaper
Nobel Prize for Literature
nobly disheveled
Northrop Frye
notebook
notes
noun
Novalis
novel
novelist
novelty
nursery rhyme
object
objective
objective correlative
objectivists
objects
obligation
oblique
obscure
obscurity
observation
observer
Occam's Razor
occupations
Octavio Paz
OED
old
Old English
old poetry
one's art
open
opinion
opnions
opposite
opposition
order
ordinary
ordinary language
ordinary things
organic
original
original manner
originality
ornament
Oscar Wilde
Osip Mandelstam
ostranenie
outer
output
outside world
outsiders
overused words
Pablo Neruda
Pablo Picasso
pace
page
pain
painter
painters
painting
panorama
paradise
paragraph
parent
parerga
part
Parthenon
particularity
partisan
passages
passion
past
pathos
patience
pattern
Paul Cézanne
Paul Klee
Paul Valéry
paul verlaine
pebble
pedagogy
pelican
pen
penalty
pentimenti
people
Per Kirkeby
perceptible
perception
perceptions
percision
Percy Bysshe Shelley
perfect
perfection
performance
period
permanent
person
personal library
personality
personificaiton
pet words
Peter Viereck
Phalaris
phenomenology
Philip Levine
philosopher
philosophical
philosophy
phrase
physical
physical reaction
Pierre Bonnard
pigments
place
plain
Plato
playwright
pleasure
poem is
poet
poet is
poet's calling
poet's job
poetic
poetic elements
poetic image
poetic limits
poetic line
poetics
poetics essays
poetry
poetry books
poetry collection
poetry is
poetry reading patter
poetry readings
poetry v. prose
poets
poets' poet
polictian
Polish poetry
political poetry
popular songs
potato
potency
potential
power
praise
prayer
precious
precise
precision
present moment
priest
primitive
printer
problems
process
product
proper names
props
prose
prose errand
prosody
pseudo-romanticism
public
publication
publisher
punctuation
pure poetry
purpose
qualities
Quasimodo
question
questions
quiet
quirky
quotation
quotes
Rainer Maria Rilke
Ralph J. Mills
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Randall Jarrell
rapid
rare
raw
reader
readership
reading
reading aloud
reading poetry
real
realist
reality
reason
recognition
record
recording
recurring words
refine
rejected
rejection slip
relationships
religion
remark
remarks
remembrance
rendering
repair
repetition
reputation
resist
resonance
responsibility
result
revelation
reviewers
revision
revolution
rhetoric
rhyme
rhythm
Richard Howard
Richard Hugo
Richard Wilbur
right
right to be
right word
river
roam
Robert Bly
Robert Duncan
Robert Frost
Robert Graves
Robert Lowell
Robert Penn Warren
Robert Philips
Robert Southey
Robert Walser
Robinson Jeffers
rock
rock star
rocks
Roland Barthes
role
Roman Jakobson
Roman poetry
romantic
romantic poetry
romanticism
root
Roque Dalton
Rudolf Steiner
Russian Formalism
Russian poetics
S. T. Coleridge
sailors
same poem
Samuel Johnson
Sappho
saturate
saved
saying
scheme
scholars
school
science
scope
scrape
scraps of language
scrawl
sculpture
secret of poetry
see
seeing
self
self-critical
self-indulgent
semantic
semicolon
sensations
sense
senses
sensibility
sensuality
sentence
sentence diagraming
sentence structure
sentences
sentimental
separate
serious
serpent
setting
sexism
Shakespeare
shamefaced
shapes
shards
sharp remark
shepherd
shop-talk
shopping
short line
short story
silence
silent
simile
Simone Weil
simple
simplicity
simplify
sing
skeleton
skill
slant
sleep
sleepy
slights
small
small forms
small poem
small things
soap bubble
society
Socrates
solid
soliloquy
solitude
Solon the Wise
solutions
song
song lyrics
sophistication
Soren Kierkegaard
sorrow
soul
sound
sound and sense
soup
space
Spanish
speaker
speaking
specific
speech
sphinx
spirit
spiritual
St. John Perse
St. Thomas Aquinas
stained-glass
staircase
stakes
stance
standards
Stanley Fish
Stanley Kunitz
stanza
star
static
stature
stay
steal
steel
Stephen Leacock
Stephen Spender
sterile
stone
stop
stories
stormy
strange
stress
structure
student
students
stumbling
style
subject
subjective
subjectivity
subjects
sublime
substance
substitution of terms
subtle
suffering
supreme fiction
surprise
surrealism
Susan Sontag
Susanne Langer
sustenance
Sydney Smith
syllable
Sylvia Plath
symbol
symbols
sympathetic magic
sympathies
sympathy
system
systematic
T.S. Eliot
table
table talk
Tagore
tale
talent
talk poetry
taste
taxonomy
teaching
teaching writing
tear
tears
technique
techniques
Ted Hughes
teeth
tell
teller
temptation
tenderness
the age
the bar
the big short
the times
theatre
theft
Theodore Roethke
theology
theory
thing
thing itself
thingness
things
thinking
Thom Gunn
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Hardy
thought
thoughts
threadbare
three-name poets
time
time batteries
times
tissue
title
Tomas Tranströmer
tools
Torquato Tasso
totality
touch
tourist
toy
trade
tradition
traditional form
tragedy
transcendent
transformation
translation
tree
tremble
triggering town
trinket
trivial
trope
trust
truth
turn
twenty-fifth poem
twisting
typo
tyrants
ugly
Umberton Eco
uncertainty
understanding
unity
universal
universe
university
untranslatable
ursprache
ut pictura poesis
Vachel Lindsay
vagueness
vector
veneration
verities
verse
verse is
vices
Vienna
Viktor Shklovsky
village explainer
violence
Virgil
Virginia Woolf
virtues
vision
visual
Vladimir Nabokov
vocabulary
vocation
voice
Vuillard
vulgar
W. B. Yeats
W. H. Auden
W. R. Johnson
W. Somerset Maugham
wag
walking
Wallace Stevens
Walt Whitman
Walter Anderson
Walter Pater
war
wars
waste
water pistols
weather
weaver
Wei T'ai
Weldon Kees
well-made
Werner Heisenberg
whales
what's poetry for
where poems come from
white fathers
whole
wild
wild flower
wildness
will
William Blake
William Carlos Williams
William Gass
William Jay Smith
William Morris
William Shakespeare
William Stafford
William Wordsworth
wind
window
wine
winter
wisdom
Wislawa Szymborska
wit
witness
women
women's poetry
women's writing
wonder
word
word play
words
wordum wrixlan
work
work of art
world
writing
writing poetry
writing well
written poetry
wrong words
yiddish
young poets
youth
Yvor Winters
Zbigniew Herbert
Zeuxis
Zibaldone
entries
heraclitus