The charge frequently leveled against poetry - that it is difficult, obscure, hermetic and whatnot - indicates not the state of poetry but, frankly, the rung of the evolutionary ladder on which society is stuck.
Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution, and the raising of consciousness.
In poetry, I have, since very young, loved poetry in translation. The Chinese, the French, the Russians, Italians, Indians and early Celts: the formality of the translator's voice, their measured breath and anxiety moves me as it lingers over the original.
If what distinguishes us from other species is speech, then poetry, which is the supreme linguistic operation, is our anthropological - indeed, genetic - goal.
The language of the Catholic Church - the liturgy, the prayer, the gospels - was in many ways my first poetry.
We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry.
Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.
I'm moved by people who see the world differently than others. People who see the world with a longing for its poetry often can be broken people.
I was trying to pay the bills with poems, and it was easy to memorize my poems, because I'd be riding my bike in California trying to memorize them before going on stage at a poetry lounge.
Magna Carta has become totemic. It is in the comedy of Tony Hancock, in the poetry of Kipling, never far from the front pages in a constitutional crisis.
I can be upset by malice. Most critics are very poor poets. Poetry is a craft that takes a lot to appreciate, and there are some critics who have no ear for it. An irresponsible critic can do a lot of psychic damage, but eventually, they don't affect your work.
Manifesting that order of poetry where we can at last grow up to that which we stored up as we grew.
My artistic manifesto exists in the world as poetry. So even though most of the things that I've done have been on other people's projects or could be pigeonholed in certain ways, that's not how I perceive myself.
I really liked 'Blk Girl Art.' It's like a manifesto saying why I create, whether it's poetry or music.
Writing poetry is the hard manual labor of the imagination.
Somehow, the words don't have any vitality, any life to them, unless I can feel it marking on a paper. That's how I start. Once I'm off, then I switch to the laptop. I think it would all just be prose if it started on a laptop - not that what I do is poetry.
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.
Nothing I had written before 'Mary Poppins' had anything to do with children, and I have always assumed, when I thought about it at all, that she had come out of the same wall of nothingness as the poetry, myth and legend that had absorbed me all my writing life.
My all time favourite films - one is 'Mary Poppins,' and the other one is 'Pakeezah.' 'Pakeezah' was an Indian film. The beauty of 'Pakeezah' was that it had a soundtrack which was pure poetry.
In Lithuania, I am known as a poet, and they don't care about my cinema. In Europe, they don't know my poetry; in Europe, I am a filmmaker. But here, in the United States, I am only a maverick!
