Literature and Words

A good poem is like a bouillon cube. It’s concentrated, you carry it around with you, and it nourishes you when you need it.

The library is an arena of possibility, opening both a window into the soul and a door onto the world.

Peace goes into the making of a poet as flour goes into the making of bread.

Literary intellectuals at one pole—at the other scientists, and as the most representative, the physical scientists. Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension—sometimes (particularly among the young) hostility and dislike, but most of all lack of understanding.

 

A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.

The Wordsworthian or egotistical sublime.

[ On the Bible :] It is full of interest. It hasnoble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies.

‘What is the use of a book’, thought Alice,

[ Socrates speaking :] If men learn this [writing], it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. . . . And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows.

Ce qui n’est pas clair n’est pas français.

Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests. I’ll dig with it.

The original is unfaithful to the translation. of Henley’s translation of Beckford ’s Vathek

A poem should not mean But be.

 

Poetry is the purest of the language arts. It’s the tightest cage, and if you can get to sing in that cage it’s really really wonderful.

It is a true error to marry with poets or to be by them.

Black A, white E, red I, green U, blue O: vowels, Someday I shall recount your latent births. 10

The one man who should never attempt an explanation of a poem is its author.

High thoughts must have high language.

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.

Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. There’s many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher. The idea of being a writer attracts a good many shiftless people, those who are merely burdened with poetic feelings or afflicted with sensibility.

 

‘Load every rift’ of your subject with ore.

I have bathed in the Poem

Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.

 

What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!—and you, Garcia Lorca what were you doing down by the watermelons?