I used to buy scented poetry books on tour and read aloud to the band. Not what you'd expect, huh?
Society's dark hull drifts further and further away. It is this place - the place of our separation, our distinction - that much of his poetry occupies.
A lot of ancient poetry sees in nature a reflection of human emotions, and in a post-industrialized era, once people have become more aware of the necessity of a more harmonious relation between man and nature, we need to build cities which can connect with human spiritual needs instead of being merely functional.
Poetry isn't just different from prose, it's more important for the human species.
In much of computer science, I can easily 'auto-grade' your work and give you an instant meaningful feedback. I can't do this when it comes to the subtlety of human thought, language, poetry, philosophy.
I'm about 75 pages into a book on poetry. I don't know if anybody wants to read it. It's on any broad variety of subjects. I walk down the street and think of a topic and jot it down and say, 'Okay, that's another one.' They go from the humorous to the serious to every topic imaginable.
One of the things that is wonderful about hymns is that they are a sort of universally shared poetry, at least among certain populations.
Women are treated as unjustly in poetry as in life. The feminine ones are not idealistic, and the idealistic not feminine.
Poetry is like a bird, it ignores all frontiers.
Reality only reveals itself when it is illuminated by a ray of poetry.
Poetry carries the imagery which is large enough for the kind of life we want for ourselves.
I had a strong propensity, which I still have, to be invisible. In grade school, I'd try to disappear and become formless. I lived in a very imaginary world. I loved poetry and wrote my first novel when I was 9. It was about a little girl and the people she met in the woods.
There's a fierce practicality and empiricism which the whole imaginative, lyrical aspect of poetry comes from.
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.
For thousands of years, poetry has been picturing love as a mysterious and tragic power. But when anyone says the same thing in plain prose, and adds that life would be colourless and poor without the great passions, then this is called immorality!
I learned to impersonate the kind of person that talks about poetry. It comes from teaching, I think.
I think one of the things that people tend to forget is that poets do write out of life. It isn't some set piece that then gets put up on the shelf, but that the impetus, the real instigation for poetry is everything that's happening around us.
In rap music, even though the element of poetry is very strong, so is the element of the drum, the implication of the dance. Without the beat, its commercial value would certainly be more tenuous.
At twenty, I implicitly dissociated poetry from politics.
