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Poetry Quotes

    “[Bashō] prized sincerity and clarity [in poetry] and instructed, ‘Follow nature, return to nature, be nature.’ He had learned to meet each day with fresh eyes. ‘Yesterday’s self is already worn out!'”

    Bashō, Narrow Road To The Interior (Page 191)

      “[Bashō’s] fundamental teaching remained his conviction that in composing a poem, ‘There are two ways: one is entirely natural, in which the poem is born from within itself; the other way is to make it through the mastery of technique.’ His notion of the poem being ‘born within itself’ should under no circumstances be confused with its being self-originating. A fundamental tenet of Buddhism runs exactly to the contrary: nothing is self-originating.”

      Bashō, Narrow Road To The Interior (Page 190)

        “[Bashō] believed that poetry should arise naturally from close observation, revealing itself in the careful use of ordinary language.”

        Bashō, Narrow Road To The Interior (Page 187)

          “I tried to give up the Way of Elegance and stop writing poems, but something always stirred my heart and mind—such is its magic.”

          Bashō, Narrow Road To The Interior (Page 185)

            “In the end, without skill or talent, I’ve given myself over entirely to poetry. Po Chü-i labored at it until he nearly burst. Tu Fu starved rather than abandon it. Neither my intelligence nor my writing is comparable to such men. Nevertheless, in the end, we all live in phantom huts.”

            Bashō, Narrow Road To The Interior (Page 182)

              “The attitude is paradoxical: the Zen poet believes the real experience of poetry lies somewhere beyond the words themselves but, like a good Confucian, believes simultaneously that only the perfect word perfectly placed has the power to reveal the authentic experience of the poem.”

              Sam Hamill, Narrow Road To The Interior (Page XVIII)

                “It is always what is under pressure in us, especially under pressure of concealment—that explodes in poetry.”

                Adrienne Rich, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 115)

                  “Be like the bird, pausing in his flight

                  On limb too slight,

                  Feels it give way, yet sings,

                  Knowing he has wings.”

                  Victor Hugo, Sunbeams (Page 17)

                    “One day while studying a Yeats poem I decided to write poetry the rest of my life. I recognized that a single short poem has room for history, music, psychology, religious thought, mood, occult speculation, character, and events of one’s own life. I still feel surprised that such various substances can find shelter and nourishment in a poem. A poem in fact may be a sort of nourishing liquid, such as one uses to keep an amoeba alive. If prepared right, a poem can keep an image or a thought or insights on history or the psyche alive for years, as well as our desires and airy impulses.”

                    Robert Bly, Sunbeams (Page 5)

                    Ethan Hawke Quote on Art and Why Human Creativity Matters

                      “Do you think human creativity matters? Well, most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about poetry, right? They have a life to live and they’re really not that concerned with Allen Ginsberg’s poems or anyone’s poems—until, their father dies; they go to a funeral; you lose a child; someone breaks your heart. And all of a sudden you’re desperate for making sense out of this life. ‘Has anybody felt this bad before? How did they come out of this cloud?’ Or the inverse—something great. You meet somebody and your heart explodes—you love them so much you can’t even see straight. You’re dizzy. ‘Did anybody feel like this before? What is happening to me?’ And that’s when art’s not a luxury—it’s actually sustenance. We need it.”

                      Ethan Hawke, TED

                      Beyond the Quote (276/365)

                      Has anybody felt as bad as you might be feeling? Yes. And worse. How did they come out of that cloud? They wrote about it. Talked about it. Created something with it. They expressed it. Connected with other people about it. And many of them left it there for people, like you, to find and possibly connect with, too. Have you found what they left for you? Or have you been distracted? Have you even tried to search or are you too busy not looking? Human creativity—art—is the sustenance we need to nourish our souls.

                      Read More »Ethan Hawke Quote on Art and Why Human Creativity Matters