The death penalty not only takes away the life of the person strapped to the table - it takes away a little bit of the humanity in each of us.
Clint SmithRead
One does not read a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks with hopes that it will grant him a career in engineering; he does so because poetry helps him see something in the world that he might not have seen before.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Poetry enriches our understanding of the world beyond practicality or career goals.
This quote emphasizes that engaging with poetry is not about achieving tangible career benefits, but rather about expanding one's perspective and enhancing one's perception of the world. It highlights the intrinsic value of art in revealing deeper insights and emotions that might otherwise go unnoticed in our everyday lives.
Themes
PoetryPerceptionUnderstandingArtInsight
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the value of literature in education, one might say, 'As Clint Smith points out, poetry provides insights beyond traditional career paths.'
More from Clint Smith
All quotes →In an effort to create a culture within my classroom where students feel safe sharing the intimacies of their own silences, I have four core principles posted on the board that sits in the front of my class, which every student signs at the beginning of the year: read critically, write consciously, speak clearly, tell your truth.
Clint SmithRead
History has proven that art depicting black people cannot be disentangled from the political implications that such art has on their lives. As Africans were being stripped from the continent and sailed across the Atlantic to the Western world, depictions of black people in Western art changed in order to further render them racialized caricatures.
Clint SmithRead
Photography, sculpture, and painting were wielded as cultural weapons over the course of generations to substantiate the idea that black people were inherently subordinate beings; they were used to make slavery acceptable and to make black subjugation more palatable.
Clint SmithRead
In my hometown of New Orleans, grief is a public spectacle that, somewhat paradoxically, necessitates celebration. The dead are not mourned so much as they are posthumously venerated with music and dance.
Clint SmithRead
My parents raised me and my siblings in an armor of advice, an ocean of alarm bells so someone wouldn't steal the breath from our lungs, so that they wouldn't make a memory of this skin.
Clint SmithRead
Similar quotes
I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.
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If you keep eating McDonald's, you gonna get sick. You need a real home-cooked meal. And I knew that that would be healthier. And that's what Wu-Tang was: It was a home-cooked meal of hip-hop. Of the real people.
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In journalism, a fact is just a fact. But in fiction, you have to build your case. It has to be made, step by step.
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Rhyme patterns are nothing without meanings to the words. A lot of rappers can do those flows, but the raps aren't really about anything - which is cool sometimes, but to have the flow and the message is one of my favorite things.
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I think all art comes out of conflict. When I write I am always looking for the dramatic kernel of an event, the junctures of people's lives when they go in one direction, not another.
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On a morning from a Bogart movie, in a country where they turn back time. You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre, contemplating a crime. She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running like a watercolor in the rain. Don't bother asking for explanations, she'll just tell you that she came in the year of the cat.
Al StewartRead