I dream of lost vocabularies that might express some of what we no longer can.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the loss of language and expression over time, yearning for words that once held meaning.
Jack Gilbert's quote eloquently captures the idea that as time passes, language can evolve or become obsolete, leading to a loss of the ability to express certain thoughts and feelings. It suggests a longing for the richness of language that might encapsulate experiences and emotions that are difficult to convey with modern vocabulary, highlighting the importance of words in connecting us to our past and to one another.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of preserving language, one might quote this to illustrate the beauty of words.
Being alive is so extraordinary I don’t know why people limit it to riches, pride, security—all of those things life is built on. People miss so much because they want money and comfort and pride, a house and a job to pay for the house. And they have to get a car. You can’t see anything from a car. It’s moving too fast. People take vacations. That’s their reward—the vacation. Why not the life?
But anything worth doing is worth doing badly. Like being there by that summer ocean on the other side of the island while love was fading out of her, the stars burning so extravagantly those nights that anyone could tell you they would never last.
Are the angels of her bed the angels who come near me alone in mine? Are the green trees in her window the color is see in ripe plums? If she always sees backward and upside down without knowing it what chance do we have? I am haunted by the feeling that she is saying melting lords of death, avalanches, rivers and moments of passing through, And I am replying, "Yes, yes. Shoes and pudding.
We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.
I like ornament at the right time, but I don't want a poem to be made out of decoration ... When I read the poems that matter to me, it stuns me how much the presence of the heart-in all its forms-is endlessly available there. To experience ourselves in an important way just knocks me out. It puzzles me why people have given that up for cleverness. Some of them are ingenious, more ingenious than I am, but so many of them aren't any good at being alive.
WAKING AT NIGHT The blue river is grey at morning and evening. There is twilight at dawn and dusk. I lie in the dark wondering if this quiet in me now is a beginning or an end.
...never go to look on man till you have first looked on your God.
The most evident difference springs from the important part which is played in man by a relatively strong power of imagination and by the capacity to think, aided as it is by language and other symbolically devices.
Ideas don't desert you; ideas aren't treasonous to you, but people can be.
When the spirit shines, even foggy skies make pleasant light.
In the company of friends, writers can discuss their books, economists the state of the economy, lawyers their latest cases, and businessmen their latest acquisitions, but mathematicians cannot discuss their mathematics at all. And the more profound their work, the less understandable it is.
Do not try to explain feelings. Live everything intensely and treasure what you feel as a gift from God.
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