A Quote by Jack Spicer

Loneliness is necessary for pure poetry.

Jack Spicer

Quote Topics

Loneliness Necessary Poetry Pure

Quote Author

Jack Spicer
American - Poet
January 30, 1925 - August 17, 1965

Loneliness is necessary for pure poetry. When someone intrudes into the poet's life (and any sudden personal contact, whether in the bed or in the heart, is an intrusion) the poet loses his or her balance for a moment, slips into being what he or she is, uses his or her poetry as one would use money or sympathy. The person who writes the poetry emerges, tentatively, like a hermit crab from a conch shell. The poet, for that instant, ceases to be a dead person.

Jack Spicer

I am Manuel. I have lived in the loneliness which is common to all men, but the difference is that I have known it. Now it is necessary for me, as it is necessary for all men, to die in this same loneliness, and I know that there is no help for it.

James Branch Cabell

You cannot lecture on really pure poetry any more than you can talk about the ingredients of pure water-it is adulterated, methylated, sanded poetry that makes the best lectures.

Virginia Woolf

Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas. ... [By seeking] logical beauty spiritual formulas are discovered necessary for the deeper penetration into the laws of nature.

Albert Einstein

Poetry is like air. It's one of the necessary things. Everyone benefits from poetry. And as you know, poetry is international. There are only two things that are truly international, poetry and wine.

Nikki Giovanni

We have no need to teach pure motives to the mind. All that is necessary to make the mind pure is to undo the negative conditioning to which it has been subjected; then we will be left with Pure, Unconditioned Awareness.

Eknath Easwaran

The poetry I grew up on is really an intense form of poetry; it's so pure and powerful.

K'naan

Fiction is one of the few experiences where loneliness can be both confronted and relieved. Drugs, movies where stuff blows up, loud parties - all these chase away loneliness by making me forget my name's Dave and I live in a one-by-one box of bone no other party can penetrate or know. Fiction, poetry, music, really deep serious sex, and, in various ways, religion - these are the places (for me) where loneliness is countenanced, stared down, transfigured, treated.

David Foster Wallace

Any decent society must generate a feeling of community. Community offsets loneliness. It gives people a vitally necessary sense of belonging. Yet today the institutions on which community depends are crumbling in all the techno-societies. The result is a spreading plague of loneliness.

Alvin Toffler

Birth is the start of loneliness and loneliness the start of poetry.

Erica Jong

I do not think [poetry] is more, or less, necessary than food, shelter, health, education, decent working conditions. It is as necessary.

Adrienne Rich

Political poetry is more profoundly emotional than any other-at least as much as love poetry-and cannot be forced because then it becomes vulgar and unacceptable. It is necessary first to pan though all other poetry in order to become a political poet.

Pablo Neruda

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.

Damon Galgut

Poetry is a form of necessary speech... I have sought to restore the aura of sacred practice that accompanies true poetic creation, to honor both the rational and the irrational elements of poetry.