All Quotes By Tag: Words

“A precious, mouldering pleasure ’t is To meet an antique book, In just the dress his century wore; A privilege, I think.”

“Long hours spent in the study of any text will reveal inner, unseen contours, an abstract architecture. This is as true of sacred books as of those poems written in pursuit of courtly or earthly love, or even of language itself. The ancient Mosaic law had accommodated this insight to the disadvantage of the surface layer, of images, while the Roman Catholic Church, akin to the preliterate cultural forms from which it in part arose, allows for the existence of a mystical understanding and experience of these abstractions. The careful scholar cannot but help but become aware of the conflict: when one speaks of the word, or Word, what is one truly speaking of? Who is the architect, man, and—or—a—God? Attempts to apprehend this new reality, these tensions, went initially by the names of philosophy, theology, science. What is it to know deeply? Is knowledge not always a form of power that, taken too far, cannot be turned against itself?”

“My words are the garment of what I shall never be Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy.”

“A precious, mouldering pleasure ’tis To meet an antique book, In just the dress his century wore; A privilege, I think, His venerable hand to take, And warming in our own, A passage back, or two, to make To times when he was young. His quaint opinions to inspect, His knowledge to unfold On what concerns our mutual mind, The literature of old”

“O words are poor receipts for what time hath stole away”

“And what is wrong with playing with words? Words love to be played with, just like children or kittens do!”

“I stalk certain words… I catch them in mid-flight, as they buzz past, I trap them, clean them, peel them, I set myself in front of the dish, they have a crystalline texture to me, vibrant, ivory, vegetable, oily, like fruit, like algae, like agates, like olives… I stir them, I shake them, I drink them, I gulp them down, I mash them, I garnish them… I leave them in my poem like stalactites, like slivers of polished wood, like coals, like pickings from a shipwreck, gifts from the waves… Everything exists in the word.”

“The true poem rests between the words.”

“…words have been all my life, all my life–this need is like the Spider’s need who carries before her a huge Burden of Silk which she must spin out–the silk is her life, her home, her safety–her food and drink too–and if it is attacked or pulled down, why, what can she do but make more, spin afresh, design anew….”

“Words are not necessary to know things, only to talk about them.”

“Ideas were found by the freethinker, expressed by poet with the new words,formulated by scholar into knowledge.”

“…if you do not even understand what words say,how can you expect to pass judgementon what words conceal?”

“A tough life needs a tough language—and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is.”

“With words at your disposal, you can see more clearly. Finding the words is another step in learning to see.”

“Now begins to rise in me the familiar rhythm; words that have lain dormant now lift, now toss their crests, and fall and rise, and falls again. I am a poet, yes. Surely I am a great poet.”