I can't tell you where a poem comes from, what it is, or what it is for: nor can any other man. The reason I can't tell you is that the purpose of a poem is to go past telling, to be recognised by burning.
Interpretation
A poem's essence transcends explanation, aiming to evoke deep recognition rather than clarity.
A. R. Ammons emphasizes that poetry cannot be confined to rigid definitions or purposes. Instead, the true impact of poetry lies in its ability to elicit visceral emotions and experiences that cannot be verbalized, suggesting that the recognition of a poem's worth comes from an internal, almost primal understanding, rather than intellectual analysis.
In practice
During a literary discussion, one might use this quote to illustrate the profound nature of poetry.
Even if you walk exactly the same route each time - as with a sonnet - the events along the route cannot be imagined to be the same from day to day, as the poet's health, sight, his anticipations, moods, fears, thoughts cannot be the same.
If the greatest god is the stillness all the motions add up to, then we must ineluctably be included.
For though we often need to be restored to the small, concrete, limited, and certain, we as often need to be reminded of the large, vague, unlimited, unknown
Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.
The more I've gotten interested in writing about history and making sense of myself within the continuum of history, the more I've turned to paintings, to art. I look to the imagery of art to help me understand something about my own place in the world.
I have been frequently accused of deliberately twisting subject matter to my point of view. Above all, I know that life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference. Opinion often consists of a kind of criticism. But criticism can come out of love.
I don't want to think that the stories are finite; I want to feel that they can go on forever.
Writing is like going to bed with a beautiful woman and afterwards she gets up, goes to her purse and gives me a handful of money.
Can one think that because we are engineers, beauty does not preoccupy us or that we do not try to build beautiful, as well as solid and long lasting structures? Aren't the genuine functions of strength always in keeping with unwritten conditions of harmony? ... Besides, there is an attraction, a special charm in the colossal to which ordinary theories of art do not apply.
A play is made by sensing how the forces in life simulate ignorance-you set free the concealed irony, the deadly joke.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.