The poet…is the man of metaphor: while the philosopher is interested only in the truth of meaning, beyond even signs and names, and the sophist manipulates empty signs…the poet plays on the multiplicity of signifieds.
Why does my brain insist on counting the steps every time I walk up a flight of stairs? I just can't help myself. There's something about my mind that always wants to keep counting.
I was concerned with something like the notion of 'language speaking the subject,' and with the transformation of the woman herself into a sign in a system of signs that represent a system of food production, a system of harnessed subjectivity.
Different levels of photography require different levels of understanding and skill. A "press the button, let George do the rest" photographer needs little or no technical knowledge of photography. A zone system photographer takes more responsibility. He visualizes before he presses the button, and afterwards calibrates for predictable print values.
Perhaps the most significant thing a person can know about himself is to understand his own system of values. Almost every thing we do is a reflection of our own personal value system. What do we mean by values? Our values are what we want out of life. No one is born with a set of values. Except for our basic physiological needs such as air, water, and food, most of our values are acquired after birth.
I therefore believe that our system does not have a word for failed trial, and that is where the American public does not realize that our criminal justice system sometimes makes mistakes.
I know what I want and know my values, and therefore, it's easy to take hard choices when you know what the ambitions are and what values you stand for, so it's all about staying true to yourself, be yourself.
I'm not a rock star writing poetry. I don't feel like a rock star and I don't know what one is, actually. I'm a goalie/poet or a hotel guest/poet or a father/poet.
Manipulation, sloganizing, depositing, regimentation, and prescription cannot be components of revolutionary praxis, precisely because they are the components of the praxis of domination.
First you destroy those who create values. Then you destroy those who know what the values are, and who also know that those destroyed before were in fact the creators of values. But real barbarism begins when no one can any longer judge or know that what he does is barbaric.
I think the Invictus Games is something the world needs to know more about. What it does for the competitors and what it does for the families and what it does for the wounded warriors and their support system is nothing short of phenomenal. More people need to know about it.
I know that in a poem, even when the speaker is speaking from the poet's experience, there's always something that's borrowed, some authority that sits outside of the poet that the poem has claimed. There's a dramatic pitch that makes the speaker capable of saying something more courageous or stranger or simply other than what the poet would be able to say.
I started out as a poet. I've always been a poet since I was 7 or 8. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels.
Make no mistake: Deciding to abstain from the Pledge of Allegiance does communicate something, and therefore, it is a form of speech. It's also a form of peaceful protest, the right to which is another one of our values.
The relation between a poet and audience is really insignificant. What matters is the poet is hearing something that he is broadcasting. And whether there is anybody with a receiver isn't the reason he does it. He hopes there is somebody receiving it.
The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb.