Reading it aloud – poetry is, after all, just written down speech – allow the poem to have a moment to exist. The reader has to put as much care into the reading of the poem as the poet has into writing it. In the relationship between poet, poem and reader, every element has to pull its weight.
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Should ever the fine-eyed maid to me be kind; Ah! surely it must be whenever I find; Some flowery spot, sequestered, wild, romantic; That often must have seen a poet frantic.
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A poet can read. A poet can write. A poet is African in Africa, or Irish in Ireland, or French on the left bank of Paris, or white in Wisconsi...
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There exist only three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the soldier, the poet. To know, to kill, to create.
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The art of writing is mysterious; the opinions we hold are ephemeral , and I prefer the Platonic idea of the Muse to that of Poe, who reasoned, or feigned to reason, that the writing of a poem is an act of the intelligence. It never fails to amaze me that the classics hold a romantic theory of poetry, and a romantic poet a classical theory.
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The poet is born with the capacity of arranging words in such a way that something of the quality of the graces and inspirations he has received can make itself felt to other human beings in the white spaces, so to speak, between the lines of his verse. This is a great and precious gift; but if the poet remains content with his gift, if he persists in worshipping the beauty in art and nature without going on to make himself capable, through selflessness, of apprehending Beauty as it is in the divine Ground, then he is only an idolater.
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There exist only three beings worthy of respect the priest, the soldier, the poet. To know, to kill, to create.
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Every time a poet writes a poem it’s like it’s the first time. When you’ve finished a poem, you don’t know if you’ll ever write another one. Some poems arrive with a weight that’s more significant than other poems and you know it will take a lot of care to do it justice. Poetry, for so long now, has been the way I relate to everything. It’s like a companion. I can’t imagine ever being separated from it.
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If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches.
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If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches.
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A poet who has not produced a good poem before he is twenty-five, we may conclude cannot, and never will do so.
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Every poem can be considered in two ways--as what the poet has to say, and as a thing which he makes.
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Perhaps there is a degree of perception at which what is real and what is imagines are one: a state of clairvoyant observation, accessible or possibly accessible to the poet or, say, the acutest poet.
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If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not a poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.
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The poet is the priest of the invisible.
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True, what you sacrifice for the world is but poorly recognized by it; for it is man that rules and reaps the harvest; the thousand night watches and sacrifices by which a mother secures the state a hero or a poet are forgotten, not even mentioned, for the mother herself does not mention them, and so one century after another do the wives, unknown and unrewarded send forth the arrows, the starts the storm-birds and the nightingales of time.
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The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense his life. . . . The beautiful vagabonds, endowed with every grace, masters of all climes, and knowing no bounds -- how many human aspirations are realised in their free, holiday-lives -- and how many suggestions to the poet in their flight and song!
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Every English poet should master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them.
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An Eastern poet, Ali Ben Abu Taleb, writes with sad truth, He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, And he who has one enemy shall meet him everywhere
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The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.
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She opened up a book of poems and handed it to me written by an Italian poet from the 13th century and every one of them words rang true and glowed like burning coal pouring off of every page like it was written in my soul from me to you.
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Suppose that humans happen to be so constructed that they desire the opportunity for freely undertaken productive work. Suppose that they want to be free from the meddling of technocrats and commissars, bankers and tycoons, mad bombers who engage in psychological tests of will with peasants defending their homes, behavioral scientists who can't tell a pigeon from a poet, or anyone else who tries to wish freedom and dignity out of existence or beat them into oblivion.
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The poet gives us his essence, but prose takes the mold of the body and mind.
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Ah wretched We, Poets of Earth! but Thou Wert Living the same Poet which thou'rt Now,...
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In order to master the unruly torrent of life the learned man meditates, the poet quivers, and the political hero erects the fortress of his will.
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Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content.
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What is a Poet?
"He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them."
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The player envies only the player, the poet envies only the poet.
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By listening to his language of his locality the poet begins to learn his craft. It is his function to lift, by use of imagination and the language he hears, the material conditions and appearances of his environment to the sphere of the intelligence where they will have new currency.
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American poetry, like American painting, is always personal with an emphasis on the individuality of the poet.
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