I keep trying to define 'poetry,' but it's so difficult.
What actually makes poetry poetry is of course impossible to define. We recognize it when we hear it, when we see it, but we can't define it.
Attempting to define science fiction is an undertaking almost as difficult, though not so popular, as trying to define pornography... In both pornography and SF, the problem lies in knowing exactly where to draw the line.
To define the era we live in is very difficult. How do we define it? We define it by music.
While also, importantly, not wanting to dumb it down or pretend the days of 'difficult' poetry are over, because we live in a pluralist culture and there's room for 'difficult' poetry alongside rap and everything else. And poetry won't be for everyone, but everyone should have the choice.
I don't know that I could really define love. I can't . . . again, it's like trying to define what this creative force is. It's beyond my ability to really define. If I can define it, then it's not it. We're right back to that thing again.
I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.
Running through a lot of traditional photojournalism there is an overwhelming sense of... pictures that say something, that define something. I'm not trying to define things. I'm trying to explore things. I'm trying to ask questions.
I find a lot of poetry very disappointing, but I do have poets that I go back to. One book of poetry that I'd like to mention is 'The Exchange' by Sophie Cabot Black. Her poems are difficult without being too difficult.
I just keep trying and failing and I will continue to keep trying to see what I can do to try to keep people engaged in the conversation about our Lord and Savior, man. Really that's all I'm trying to do.
One of the difficult things, especially about blogging, is that you put all of your personal out there, into the political. And what's been difficult, for me at least, is trying to keep some of the personal for myself.
Science fiction is hard to define because it is the literature of change and it changes while you are trying to define it.
There have always been great defenses of poetry, and I've tried to write mine, and I think all of my work and criticism is a defense of poetry to try and keep something alive in poetry.
I don't think you can define how you acquire your imagination any more than you can define why one person has a sense of humor and another doesn't. But I certainly would lean to the side that says all those solitary hours of daydreaming were a kind of training for poetry.
The transcendent experience is brotherly love, nature, harmony and unity. Cultures, in trying to define it, try to define an external deity as opposed to the process.
Poetry was syllable and rhythm. Poetry was the measurement of breath. Poetry was time make audible. Poetry evoked the present moment; poetry was the antidote to history. Poetry was language free from habit.