#poetry

You will always be the bread and the knife, not to mention the crystal goblet and—somehow—the wine. ↗

— Billy Collins

#wine

Gather the stars if you wish it so Gather the songs and keep them. Gather the faces of women. Gather for keeping years and years. And then... Loosen your hands, let go and say good-bye. Let the stars and songs go. Let the faces and years go. Loosen your hands and say good-bye. ↗

— Carl Sandburg

#goodbye

... It seems to me / the the great bards of the 20th century are in Publicity / those Keatses and Shelleys singing the Colgate smile / Cosmic Coca-Cola, the pause the refreshes, / the make of car that will take us to the land of happiness. ↗

— Ernesto Cardenal

#marxism #poetry #catholicism

In the lie of truth lies the truth. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#dejan-stojanovic #lie #lies #literature #literature-quotes

Across the centuries the moral systems from medival chivalry to Bruce Springsteen love anthems have worked the same basic way. They take immediate selfish interests and enmesh them within transcendent, spiritual meanings. Love becomes a holy cause, an act of self-sacrifice and selfless commitment. But texting and the utilitarian mind-set are naturally corrosive toward poetry and imagination. A coat of ironic detachment is required for anyone who hopes to withstand the brutal feedback of the marketplace. In today's world, the choice of a Prius can be a more sanctified act than the choice of an erotic partner. This does not mean that young people today are worse or shallower than young people in the past. It does mean they get less help. People once lived within a pattern of being, which educated the emotions, guided the temporary toward the permanent and linked everyday urges to higher things. The accumulated wisdom of the community steered couples as they tried to earn each other's commitment. Today there are fewer norms that guide that way. Today's technology seems to threaten the sort of recurring and stable reciprocity that is the building block of trust. ↗

— David Brooks

#poetry #society #education

For the past thirty years or so, much American poetry has been marked by an earnestness that rejects the comic. This has nothing to do with seriousness. The comic can be very serious. The trouble with the earnest is that it seeks to be commended. It seeks to be praised for its intention more than for what it is saying. ↗

— Stephen Dobyns

#writing-craft

Epic poetry exhibits life in some great symbolic attitude. It cannot strictly be said to symbolize life itself, but always some manner of life. ↗

— Lascelles Abercrombie

#attitude #cannot #epic #epic poetry #exhibits

That is to say, epic poetry has been invented many times and independently; but, as the needs which prompted the invention have been broadly similar, so the invention itself has been. ↗

— Lascelles Abercrombie

#broadly #epic #epic poetry #independently #invented

Traditional matter must be glorified, since it would be easier to listen to the re-creation of familiar stories than to quite new and unexpected things; the listeners, we must remember, needed poetry chiefly as the re-creation of tired hours. ↗

— Lascelles Abercrombie

#easier #familiar #glorified #hours #listen

i don't want to hate the president i don't want to go to harvard i don't want to win the pulitzer prize i just want to sit in my bathtub and think about relationships i will never have with people i will never meet and then go lay in my bed with a magnifying glass and count all the stiches in my sheets until i fall asleep and wake up to repeat again. ↗

— Ellen Kennedy

#president