Literature and Words

For three years, out of key with his time, He strove to resuscitate the dead art Of poetry; to maintain “the sublime” In the old sense. Wrong from the start— No, hardly, but seeing he had been born In a half savage country, out of date.

It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.

Say it, no ideas but in things.

There it was, word for word, The poem that took the place of a mountain.

Thus the theory of description matters most. It is the theory of the word for those For whom the word is the making of the world, The buzzing world and lisping firmament. It is a world of words to the end of it, In which nothing solid is its solid self.

Poetry is the subject of the poem.

Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.

The plum survives its poems.

Considering the market, there are more Poems produced than any other thing? No wonder poets sometimes have to seem So much more businesslike than businessmen. Their wares are so much harder to get rid of.

Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, Tick, tick, tick, what little iambics, While Homer and Whitman roared in the pines!

Every true history is contemporary history. 1

Irish poets, learn your trade, Sing whatever is well made.

Homer is my example and his unchristened heart.

And I may dine at journey’s end With Landor and with Donne.

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.

I made my song a coat Covered with embroideries Out of old mythologies From heel to throat; But the fools caught it, Wore it in the world’s eyes As though they’d wrought it. Song, let them take it, For there’s more enterprise In walking naked.

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

Bright is the ring of words When the right man rings them.

And all else is literature. 5

Take eloquence and wring its neck! 4

The world has joked incessantly for over fifty centuries. And every joke that’s possible has long ago been made.

There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away Nor any Coursers like a Page Of prancing Poetry— This Traverse may the poorest take Without oppress of Toll— How frugal is the Chariot That bears the Human Soul!

A word is dead When it is said, Some say. I say it just Begins to live That day.

I reckon—when I count at all— First—Poets—Then the Sun— Then Summer—Then the Heaven of God— And then—the List is done— But, looking back—the First so seems To Comprehend the Whole— The Others look a needless Show— So I write—Poets—All—