A Quote by W. H. Auden
What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves.
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One demands two things of a poem. Firstly, it must be a well-made verbal object that does honor to the language in which it is written. Secondly, it must say something significant about a reality common to us all, but perceived from a unique perspective. What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves.
I once gave a workshop and I asked the women poets there, If you went back to that little town you've come from - these were from small towns - would you say, I'm a poet? And one of them said, If I said I was a poet in that town, they'd think I didn't wash my windows. And that stayed with me for so long, the sense of the collective responsibility of someone as against the individual thing it takes to be a poet.
Master Sigmund Freud once said that wherever I go, I find a poet has been there before me. This is simply because science either walks or runs but art has wings to fly!
Roman Polanski actually said as much to me once. He had his head in his hands, and I said, "Roman, I've got to tell you, as an actor, seeing the director with his head in his hands... Look, I really want to do what you want me to do." And he went away and he came back, having obviously thought about what I said. And he said, "When my head is in my hands, I'm closing my eyes and trying to remember what I saw in my head, before any of the stuff."
I got into an argument with someone because I said I think 2Pac will be regarded as a great poet. They said he was just a punk gangster. People said the same thing about Francois Villon, and he's now considered the best French Romantic poet of all time.
Yes you're getting your tattoo." I threw my arms around Dad's neck. "Thank you!" "Hey," Mom said. "I'm the one who had to persuade him it wasn't turning his little girl into a streetwalker." "I never said that," Dad said. "No?" I said. "Cool. Cause I've decided to skip the paw print. I'm thinking of a tramp stamp with flames that says 'Hot in Here.' No wait. Arrows. For directionally challenged guys
Goethe said, "The author whom a lexicon can keep up with is worth nothing"; Somerset Maugham says that the finest compliment he ever received was a letter in which one of his readers said: "I read your novel without having to look up a single word in the dictionary." These writers, plainly, lived in different worlds.
The political establishment, they don't know what to do about Trump because they said, oh, the immigration thing will kill him. First, they said he'll never run, and then he ran. Then they said he'll never file his financial disclosures. He filed and on time. Then they said, he's going to fall flat on his face.
I told you once before,” I said, the words husky from remembrance. “Everyone holds their sins close to their skin.” Fangs gleamed for an instant before Vlad bit into his wrist, pooling up two deep crimson holes. “Then come,” he said, holding it out. “And taste mine.
I said to my wife, 'Where do you want to go for our anniversary?' She said, 'I want to go somewhere I've never been before.' I said, 'Try the kitchen.'
"As I think I told you once before," said I, "it is you who have been, in your greed and cunning, against all the world. It may be profitable to you to reflect, in future, that there never were greed and cunning in the world yet, that did not do too much, and overreach themselves. It is as certain as death."
I am not sure, once a poet has found out what has been written already, and how it was written - once, in short, he has learnt his trade - that he should bother with literature at all. Poetry is not like surgery, a technique that can be copied. Every operation the poet performs is unique, and need never be done again.
Thomas Jefferson once said. He said , "We should never judge a President by his age, only by his works." And ever since he told me that, I've stopped worrying. There are those who say I've stopped working.
Nothing is ever the same as they said it was. It's what I've never seen before that I recognize.
There is nothing so absurd or ridiculous that has not at some time been said by some philosopher. Fontenelle says he would undertake to persuade the whole public of readers to believe that the sun was neither the cause of light or heat, if he could only get six philosophers on his side.
Honor thy Father and thy Mother was once said, but then someone said: What if I don't know your Father? A still voice said: Does that makes him the devil? He is still someone's Father, his name has been changed, but his story is the same. Why hate when we should Celebrate. In this world of two's, you got the Mourning Son, and the Daughter of the Night. They both equal light once you make it through the night. Now, wake the funk up!
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