When you read and understand a poem, comprehending its rich and formal meanings, then you master chaos a little.
Interpretation
Understanding poetry allows one to gain control over chaos in life.
This quote suggests that engaging deeply with poetry can provide insights and clarity in the midst of life's chaos. By deciphering the complexities and emotions expressed in poems, one develops a greater mastery over the unpredictable nature of existence, finding order and meaning where there might otherwise be confusion.
In practice
In a literature class discussion about the importance of poetry.
Memory exercised in a particular way is a natural gift of poetic genius. The poet above all else, is a person who never forgets certain sense impressions which he has experienced and which he can relive again as though with all their original freshness.
The greatest poets are those with memories so great that they extend beyond their strongest experiences to their minutest observations of people and things far outside their own self-centeredness.
When a child, my dreams rode on your wishes, I was your son, high on your horse, My mind a top whipped by the lashes Of your rhetoric, windy of course.
Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.
My personal experience has been that in my 25 years of writing, I have not been asked to do more than four or five commercial one-shot scripts. These were performed on major national hook-ups but produced for me no immediate additional jobs or requests. One script for BBC was done around the world with an all-star cast.
A priest once said to me, 'Think of a priest going to the altar as you walk out on the stage.' I would hate to think that anyone thought I was coming to preach. But art and music open up things that you can't put into words. It's about bringing joy when you go out there.
But however measurable, there is much more life in music than mathematics or logic ever dreamed of.
I would like to paint the way a bird sings.
Poetry involves the mysteries of the irrational perceived through rational words.
I have a deep-seated distrust and even contempt for people who are driven by ambition to conquer the world … those who cannot control themselves and produce vast amounts of crap that no one cares about. I find it unattractive. I like the Zen artists: they’d do some work, and then they’d stop for a while.
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