The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person, for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors, and invisible guests come in and out at will.
Czeslaw MiloszRead
I am composed of contradictions, which is why poetry is a better form for me than philosophy
Interpretation
The quote expresses how the complexity of human nature is better captured through poetry rather than philosophical reasoning.
Czeslaw Milosz suggests that the inherent contradictions within an individual or human experience cannot be neatly encapsulated by rigid philosophical frameworks. Instead, poetry serves as a more fitting medium to explore and express these complexities, as it allows for emotional depth, nuance, and ambiguity.
In practice
This quote can be used to introduce a poetry reading event to highlight the emotional depth of poetic expression.
The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person, for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors, and invisible guests come in and out at will.
We have become indifferent to content, and react, not even to form, but to technique, to technical efficiency itself.
Love means to look at yourself_x000D_ The way one looks at distant things_x000D_ For you are only one thing among many.
Do not feel safe. The poet remembers._x000D_ You can kill one, but another is born._x000D_ The words are written down, the deed, the date.
The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.
I imagine the earth when I am no more: Women's dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley. Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born, Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.
Art is not for the cultivated taste. It is to cultivate taste.
Actors should arouse a sense of wonder because of their ability to exceed what the spectators can envision ever being able to do.
Unlike sport, music is not about winning or keeping fit or promoting your town or school; it's about celebrating, to a level approaching ecstasy, the deepest human longings.
If literature has engaged me as a project, first as a reader, then as a writer, it is as an extension of my sympathies to other selves, other domains, other dreams, other territories.
I wanted to emulate music from America - young punks playing rock n' roll is what it was. I read part of Keith Richards' autobiography, and it was totally parallel with me, learning from American records.
A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.
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