#poets

There has been a time on earth when poets had been young and dead and famous - and were men. But now the poet as the tragic child of grandeur and destiny had changed. The child of genius was a woman, now, and the man was gone. ↗

— Tom Wolfe

#changed #child #dead #destiny #earth

It is the poet and philosopher who provide the community of objectives in which the artist participates. Their chief preoccupation, like the artist, is the expression in concrete form of their notions of reality. Like him, they deal with the verities of time and space, life and death, and the heights of exaltation as well as the depths of despair. The preoccupation with these eternal problems creates a common ground which transcends the disparity in the means used to achieve them. ↗

— Mark Rothko

#artist #artists #expression #objectives #philosophers

Many Americans first fell in love with the poetry of the thirteenth century teacher and spiritual leader Jelalludin Rumi during the early 1990s when the unparalleled lyrical grace, philosophical brilliance, and spiritual daring of his work took modern Western readers completely by surprise. The impact of its soulful beauty and the depth of its profound humanity were so intense that they reportedly prompted numerous individuals to spontaneously compose poetry. ↗

— Aberjhani

#americans #beauty #coleman-barks #famous-poets #humanity

When Great Trees Fall When great trees fall, rocks on distant hills shudder, lions hunker down in tall grasses, and even elephants lumber after safety. When great trees fall in forests, small things recoil into silence, their senses eroded beyond fear. When great souls die, the air around us becomes light, rare, sterile. We breathe, briefly. Our eyes, briefly, see with a hurtful clarity. Our memory, suddenly sharpened, examines, gnaws on kind words unsaid, promised walks never taken. Great souls die and our reality, bound to them, takes leave of us. Our souls, dependent upon their nurture, now shrink, wizened. Our minds, formed and informed by their radiance, fall away. We are not so much maddened as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of dark, cold caves. And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed. ↗

— Maya Angelou

#death #i-shall-not-be-moved #life #maya-angelou #peace

Truth is hard-hearted and unrelenting, too clear, precise; a lie is much more imaginative. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#clear #dejan-stojanovic #hard-hearted #imagination #imaginative

But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travellers notoriously false? ↗

— H. P. Lovecraft

#false #notoriously #poets #tales #travellers

If you are good, they say you are weak. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#dejan-stojanovic #good #literature #literature-quotes #philosophy

After Homer and Dante, is a whole century of creating worth one Shakespeare? ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#books #century #creating #dante #dejan-stojanovic

I think one ages and one dates. I tend to have a good deal of difficulty in liking some of the new poets. ↗

— James Laughlin

#dates #deal #difficulty #good #good deal

There are some fine books and essays about that. Lewis Hyde has written about alcoholism and poets and the role that society gives its writers - encouraging them to die. ↗

— Sharon Olds

#alcoholism #books #die #encouraging #essays