For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding: it is the deepest part of autobiography.
Interpretation
A poem serves as a personal exploration of one's self, revealing deep truths about the individual through creative expression.
In this quote, Robert Penn Warren suggests that poetry is more than just a form of art; it is a brave effort to understand oneself. By crafting a poem, the poet engages in a risky journey of introspection, sharing their innermost thoughts and feelings, and essentially documenting their personal narrative in an artistic way.
In practice
During a poetry reading, one might use this quote to introduce their own work, emphasizing personal reflection.
...the air so still it aches like the place where the tooth was on the morning after youβve been to the dentist or aches like your heart in the bosom when you stand on the street corner waiting for the light to change and happen to recollect how things once were and how they might have been yet if what happened had not happened.
The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful.
And what we students of history always learn is that the human being is a very complicated contraption and that they are not good or bad but are good and bad and the good comes out of the bad and the bad out of the good, and the devil take the hindmost.
Yet the definition we have made of ourselves is ourselves. To break out of it, we must make a new self. But how can the self make a new self when the selflessness which it is, is the only substance from which the new self can be made?
So little time we live in Time,_x000D_ _x000D_ And we learn all so painfully,_x000D_ _x000D_ That we may spare this hour's term_x000D_ _x000D_ To practice for Eternity.
Storytelling and copulation are the two chief forms of amusement in the South. They're inexpensive and easy to procure.
One of the greatest things drama can do, at it's best, is to redefine the words we use every day such as love, home, family, loyalty and envy. Tragedy need not be a downer.
Writing is sacred, other activities are profane, and I don't want them to corrupt my writing.
Everything can be going well, but if I'm not writing, I'm not happy. When I'm writing well, I'm like a different person.
Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.
Quite simply, my writing life has been one of relish, challenge, excitement.
The creation of art is not the fulfillment of a need but the creation of a need. The world never needed Beethoven's Fifth Symphony until he created it. Now we could not live without it.
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