A Quote by Dana Gioia
Poetry is not a creed or dogma. It is a special way of speaking and listening.
Related Quotes
Poetry is the most direct and simple means of expressing oneself in words: the most primitive nations have poetry, but only quitewell developed civilizations can produce good prose. So don't think of poetry as a perverse and unnatural way of distorting ordinary prose statements: prose is a much less natural way of speaking than poetry is. If you listen to small children, and to the amount of chanting and singsong in their speech, you'll see what I mean.
I developed a definition - which I think becomes less and less accurate as poetry moves into the world - that poetry was a way of speaking to the world, but fiction was a way to get the world to speak to me.
To think of writing poetry as a "career" is not only ridiculous, it's dangerous. To the imagination. To the way one thinks of art. The reason poetry as a genre is so special is because it cannot be made a commodity.
Just as in prayer it is not we who momentarily catch His attention, but He ours, so when we fail to hear His voice, it is not because He is not speaking so much as that we are not listening. We must recognize that all things are in God and that God is in all things, and we must learn to be very attentive, in order to bear God speaking in His ordinary tone without any special accent.
While I am opposed to all orthodox creeds, I have a creed myself; and my creed is this. Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so. This creed is somewhat short, but it is long enough for this life, strong enough for this world. If there is another world, when we get there we can make another creed.
The subject of Finnish poetry ought to have a special interest for the Japanese student, if only for the reason that Finnish poetry comes more closely in many respects to Japanese poetry than any other form of Western poetry.
Nothing can save us from a perpetual headlong fall into a bottomless abyss but a solid footing of dogma; and we no sooner agree to that than we find that the only trustworthy dogma is that there is no dogma.
Every dogma, every philosophic or theological creed, was at its inception a statement in terms of the intellect of a certain inner experience.
It is a deplorable fact that many Christians are so accustomed to a certain creed and dogma of their own that they will adhere to it even at the sacrifice of the great moral laws of love and mercy.
Until every soul is freely permitted to investigate every book and creed and dogma for itself, the world cannot be free.
Poetry is at the centre of my life, too, emotionally speaking, and intellectually speaking - it's just that I'm one of those people who enjoy doing other stuff as well.
There is no god and there is no soul. Hence, there is no need for the props of traditional religion. With dogma and creed excluded, then immutable truth is dead and buried. There is no room for fixed and natural law or permanent moral absolutes.
Just as the right to speak and the right to refrain from speaking are complementary components of a broader concept of individual freedom, so also the individual's freedom to choose his own creed is the counterpart of his right to refrain from accepting the creed established by the majority.
Poetry and music are the best at the highest level of the human mind. Out of poetry, out of their need for poetry, human beings have developed the idea of God. And so when we sing, when we dance, when we speak poetry we are speaking out of God's mouth, each other out of the music from God's heart.
Poetry is a religion without hope, but its martyrs guarantee the eternal truth of its dogma.
Every creed is a rock in running water: humanity sweeps by it. Every creed cries to the universe, "Halt!" A creed is the ignorant Past bulling the enlightened Present.
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