A Quote by Czeslaw Milosz
What is poetry which does not save nations or people?
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Don't you think that as a people, Americans have less poetry, real poetry, in their souls than any other nations?
Written in support of abolishing the Corn Laws, it became Elliott's most famous poem. The Peoples Anthem When wilt thou save the people Oh, God of mercy! When? Not kings and lords, but nations! Not thrones and crowns, but men! Flowers of thy heart, of God they are. Let them not pass like weeds, away Their heritage a sunless day! God save the people! When wilt thou save the people? Oh, God of mercy! When? The people Lord the people! Not thrones and crowns, but men! God save the people! Thine they are, Thy children, as thy angels fair, Save them from bondage and despair. God save the people!
Poetry can save the world. I'm a real believer in its power of healing and transforming. I wish more people read it ... Poetry is probably as close as I would get to religious feeling. I think poetry makes the world stand still.
The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That's what poetry does. By poetry I mean the imagining of what has been lost and what can be found - the imagining of who we are and the slow realization of it.
I definitely notice the absence of character in most poetry, which is not so say that I'm an innovator in that regard. Character-based poems are not weird or new by any stretch but they feel strange and new because the atmosphere is one in which no one does that. People always talk about, and with good reason, poetry's unpopularity. When people say that they forget or they brush aside the fact that in the middle part of the last century poetry was immensely popular. Dylan Thomas was basically a rock star; so was Anne Sexton.
I just think that limits the kinds of experiences that people can have with poetry. But, poetry will survive; I don't worry about that. But, I do think that it may save fewer souls if people can't pay attention.
Poetry is a solitary process. One does not write poetry for the masses. Poetry is a self-involved, lofty pursuit. Songs are for the people. When I'm writing a song, I imagine performing it. I imagine giving it. It's a different aspect of communication. It's for the people.
I pray that this council, which will probably be too late to save Iraq, will do what it can, which will be immeasurably strong in what it does in trying to save our democracy.
Teachers are the one and only people who save nations.
There is an idealism associated with poetry I would not dispel but question. It doesn't change anything except within. It shifts your insides around. Poetry is not going to reach the numbers of people by which we commonly consider a large audience. It just isn't a stadium-filler. It could still galvanize people during a crisis, but let's just say there are two points at which poetry is indispensable to people - at the point of love and the point of death. I'll second that emotion.
Sentences are not different enough to hold the attention unless they are dramatic. No ingenuity of varying structure will do. All that can save them is the speaking tone of voice somehow entangled in the words and fastened to the page for the ear of the imagination. That is all that can save poetry from sing-song, all that can save prose from itself.
The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That's what poetry does.
There comes a time in the affairs of men when they must prepare to defend not their homes alone but the tenets of faith and humanity on which their churches, their governments and their very foundations are set. The defense of religion, of democracy and of good faith among nations is all the same fight. To save one, we must now make up our minds to save all.
The primary, the fundamental, the essential purpose of the United Nations is to keep peace. Everything it does which helps prevent World War III is good. Everything which does not further that goal, either directly or indirectly, is at best superfluous.
There is no history worthy attention save that of free nations; the history of nations under the sway of despotism is no more than a collection of anecdotes.
Poetry is concerned with using with abusing, with losing
with wanting, with denying with avoiding with adoring
with replacing the noun. It is doing that always
doing that, doing that and doing nothing but that.
Poetry is doing nothing but using losing refusing and
pleasing and betraying and caressing nouns. That is
what poetry does, that is what poetry has to do no
matter what kind of poetry it is. And there are a
great many kinds of poetry.
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