If it is indeed revolution we are moving toward we need life, and abundantly- we need poems of the spirit, to inform us of the essential to help us live the revolution. And if instead it be the Last Days- then we need to taste the dearest, freshest drops before we die- why bother with anything less than that, the essential?
-Denise Levertov, the poet in the world
All the thinking I do about poetry leads me back, always, to Reverence for Life as the ground for poetic activity; because it seems the ground for Attention...Attention is the excersize of reverence for the "other forms of life that want to live." The progression seems clear to me: from Reverence for Life to Attention to Life, from Attention to Life to a highly developed Seeing and Hearing, from Seeing and Hearing (faculties almost undistinguishable for the poet) to the Discovery and Revelation of Form, from Form to Song.
-Denise Levertov, the poet in the world
The poem (not "poetry", that sop) is the capsule where only, at times in the intelligence, the facts of the case may be made secure.
-William Carlos Williams, The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams
Don't blush to write a poem, stand up to it, provided it is a structure, a structure built on your own structure, a structure built upon your own ground to assert it, your ground where you stand on your own feet, in every man's despite.
--William Carlos Williams, The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams
-Denise Levertov, the poet in the world
All the thinking I do about poetry leads me back, always, to Reverence for Life as the ground for poetic activity; because it seems the ground for Attention...Attention is the excersize of reverence for the "other forms of life that want to live." The progression seems clear to me: from Reverence for Life to Attention to Life, from Attention to Life to a highly developed Seeing and Hearing, from Seeing and Hearing (faculties almost undistinguishable for the poet) to the Discovery and Revelation of Form, from Form to Song.
-Denise Levertov, the poet in the world
The poem (not "poetry", that sop) is the capsule where only, at times in the intelligence, the facts of the case may be made secure.
-William Carlos Williams, The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams
Don't blush to write a poem, stand up to it, provided it is a structure, a structure built on your own structure, a structure built upon your own ground to assert it, your ground where you stand on your own feet, in every man's despite.
--William Carlos Williams, The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams
