Pastoral Resources

The great function of poetry is to give back to us the situations of our dreams.

Poetry is so vital to us until school spoils it.

I gave up on new poetry myself 30 years ago when most of it began to read like coded messages passing between lonely aliens in a hostile world.

Anticipating that most poetry will be worse than carrying heavy luggage through O'Hare Airport, the public, to its loss, reads very little of it.

Love is the poetry of the senses.

Poetry is but another form of inquiry into the nature of phenomena, using with its own unique procedures and tools.

Sometimes poetry is inspired by the conversation entered into by reading other poems.

My obsession with time informs my poetry so completely it is hard for me to summarize it. We want time to pass, for new things to happen to us, we want to hold on to certain moments, we don't want our lives to end.

An experienced reader uses the poem as an agent of inquiry. This makes poetry very exciting, unstable, and interactive.

If poetry alters the way in which the reader views the world, then it has had its desired effect.

In the past, poetry came in the form of spells and chants used to effect change.

When I was in college, I used to write little ditties and short stories and poetry for my friends. Writing a book is another thing. It is so much different from my traditional day of dirty fingernails and greasy hair and hot pans.

The dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music, and it has the additional merit of being human and palpable. Dancing is poetry with arms and legs.

Any healthy man can go without food for two days - but not without poetry.

Poetry and progress are like two ambitious men who hate one another with an instinctive hatred, and when they meet upon the same road, one of them has to give place.

It is the hour to be drunken! to escape being the martyred slaves of time, be ceaselessly drunk. On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you wish.

It is time to get drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of Time, get drunk; get drunk without stopping! On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you wish.

France is not poetic; she even feels, in fact, a congenital horror of poetry. Among the writers who use verse, those whom she will always prefer are the most prosaic.

Who writes poetry imbibes honey from the poisoned lips of life.

Too many people in the modern world view poetry as a luxury, not a necessity like petrol. But to me it's the oil of life.