Anyone who regards poetry as an entertainment, as a 'read,' commits an anthropological crime, in the first place against himself.
Interpretation
Poetry should be regarded as a profound experience rather than mere entertainment.
In this quote, Joseph Brodsky suggests that treating poetry solely as a form of entertainment diminishes its value and meaning. He argues that engaging with poetry should be a deep, reflective experience that speaks to the human condition, rather than a superficial activity that one engages in casually. Such an approach not only disrespects the art form but also limits personal growth and understanding.
In practice
In a literary discussion about the importance of engaging with art deeply.
Basically, it's hard for me to assess myself, a hardship not only prompted by the immodesty of the enterprise, but because one is not capable of assessing himself, let alone his work. However, if I were to summarize, my main interest is the nature of time. That's what interests me most of all. What time can do to a man.
One always pulls the trigger out of self-interest and quotes history to avoid responsibility or pangs of conscience.
On the whole, infinity is a fairly palpable aspect of this business of publishing, if only because it extends a dead author's existence beyond the limits he envisioned, or provides a living author with a future he cannot measure. In other words, this business deals with the future which we all prefer to regard as unending.
The invention of ethical and political doctrines, which blossomed into our own social sciences, is a product of times when things appeared manageable. The same goes for the criticism of those doctrines, though as a voice from the past, this criticism proved prophetic.
Try not to pay attention to those who will try to make life miserable for you. There will be a lot of those - in the official capacity as well as the self-appointed.
To put it in plain language, Russia is that country where the name of a writer appears not on the cover of his book, but on the door of his prison cell.
Each of his phrases was rather like a little ancient island, inundated by a miniature sea of whiskey.
I hate slick and pretty things. I prefer mistakes and accidents. Which is why I like things like cuts and bruises - they're like little flowers. I've always said that if you have a name for something, like 'cut' or 'bruise,' people will automatically be disturbed by it. But when you see the same thing in nature, and you don't know what it is, it can be very beautiful.
The best thing commercially, which is the worst artistically, by and large, is the most successful.
The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That's what poetry does. By poetry I mean the imagining of what has been lost and what can be found - the imagining of who we are and the slow realization of it.
When you play a videogame, you could be a completely different person than you are in the real world, certain aspects of the way your brain works can be leveraged for something you could never do in the real world.
A lot of the shadow self is the home of poetry, story, prayer. My deepest understandings are often released from the part of me of which I am least aware most of the time.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.