#poet

A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits. ↗

— Robert A. Heinlein

#poets

We need to remember that we are all created creative and can invent new scenarios as frequently as they are needed. ↗

— Maya Angelou

#poets

The philosopher with his two eyes sees double, so is unable to see the unity of the Truth. ↗

— Mahmud Shabistari

#sufi-mystic-poetry #truth #unity

How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us. So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloudshadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you. ↗

— Rainer Maria Rilke

#change #courage #depression #dragons #fears

In the desert I saw a creature, naked, bestial, Who, squatting upon the ground, Held his heart in his hands, And ate of it. I said, ‘Is it good, friend?’ ‘It is bitter — bitter,’ he answered, ‘But I like it Because it is bitter, And because it is my heart. ↗

— Stephen Crane

#heart #poetry #poem

. . . All artists’ work is autobiographical. Any writer’s work is a map of their psyche. You can really see what their concerns are, what their obsessions are, and what interests them. ↗

— Kim Addonizio

#poetry #writers #writing #obsession

There are two ways to dislike poetry: One is to dislike it; the other is to read Pope. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#wit #wit

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, You shall possess the good of the earth and sun.... there are millions of suns left, You shall no longer take things at second or third hand.... nor look through the eyes of the dead.... nor feed on the spectres in books, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself. ↗

— Walt Whitman

#originality

You think of yourself as a citizen of the universe. You think you belong to this world of dust and matter. Out of this dust you have created a personal image, and have forgotten about the essence of your true origin ↗

— Rumi

#iran #persian-poetry #rumi #rumi-poetry #originality

Recall what used to be the theme of poetry in the romantic era. In neat verses the poet lets us share his private, bourgeois emotions: his sufferings great and small, his nostalgias, his religious or political pre-occupations, and, if he were English, his pipe-smoking reveries. On occasions, individual genius allowed a more subtle emanation to envelope the human nucleus of the poem - as we find in Baudelaire for example. But this splendour was a by-product. All the poet wished was to be a human being. When he writes, I believe today's poet simply wishes to be a poet. ↗

— José Ortega y Gasset

#motivation #poetry #romanticism #art