A Quote by Galway Kinnell
Thats the way it is with poetry: When it is incomprehensible it seems profound, and when you understand it, it is only ridiculous.
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That's the way it is with poetry: When it is incomprehensible it seems profound, and when you understand it, it is only ridiculous.
To me there is nothing that goes against nature. If it seems incomprehensible, it's only because we haven't been able to understand it yet.
To me there is nothing that goes against nature. If it seems incomprehensible, its only because we havent been able to understand it yet.
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.
Sometimes poetry, it is incomprehensible. But we need incomprehensible stuff! It is very healthy to talk about incomprehensible things! It is very healthy! We need it!
If you want to change people by talking about God, then there is only one way: instead of teaching God, you must live God. Because: "teaching" God is unthinkable in any other way than the way you would teach love or poetry. You teach love only through love, poetry only through writing poetry, faith in God only through a contagious way of trusting.
It's only when I say that everything is incomprehensible that I come as close as possible to understanding the only thing it is given to us to understand.
The aim of science is to make difficult things understandable in a simpler way; the aim of poetry is to state simple things in an incomprehensible way. The two are incompatible.
Many a writer seems to think he is never profound except when he can't understand his own meaning.
There seems to be an unwritten rule on Wall Street: If you don't understand it, then put your life savings into it. Shun the enterprise around the corner, which can at least be observed, and seek out the one that manufactures an incomprehensible product.
I think we're yearning for something beyond the every day. And I will tell you that I don't believe in the supernatural, I believe in the supernormal. To me there is nothing that goes against nature. If it seems incomprehensible, it's because we haven't been able to understand it yet.
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.
When you think intensely and beautifully, something happens. That something is called poetry. If you think that way and speak at the same time, poetry gets in your mouth. If people hear you, it gets in their ears. If you think that way and write at the same time, then poetry gets written. But poetry exists in any case. The question is only: are you going to take part, and if so, how?
By the general process of epic poetry, I mean the way this form of art has constantly responded to the profound needs of the society in which it was made.
I have piles of poetry books in the bathroom, on the stairs, everywhere. The only way to write poetry is to read it.
Profound thoughts and profound experiences get revealed to be tricks that we play on ourselves, and poetry gets revealed to be just, like, some dumb words that somebody put in an interesting order.
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