Anxiety is love's greatest killer, because it is like the stranglehold of the drowning.
Anais NinRead
The poet is one who is able to keep the fresh vision of the child alive.
Interpretation
The poet maintains a childlike perspective that sees beauty and wonder in the world.
Anais Nin suggests that true poets possess the unique ability to perceive the world with the innocence and freshness characteristic of a child. This perspective allows them to capture the beauty and complexity of life in their work, making their art not only relatable but also deeply resonant with shared human experiences.
In practice
In a poetry reading, you could emphasize how poets see the world through a child's eyes, as articulated by Anais Nin.
Anxiety is love's greatest killer, because it is like the stranglehold of the drowning.
We celebrate peace. Yet we pay no attention to the ways of curing aggression in human beings. And when one sees in psychoanalysis hostility disappearing as people conquer their fears, one wonders if the cure is not there.
The impetus to grow and live intensely is so powerful in me I cannot resist it. I will work, I will love my husband, but I will fulfill myself.
We have been poisoned by fairy tales.
But I lie. I embellish. My words are not deep enough. They disguise, they conceal. I will not rest until I have told of my descent into a sensuality which was as dark, as magnificent, as wild, as my moments of mystic creation have been dazzling, ecstatic, exalted.
I gathered poets around me and we all wrote beautiful erotica. As we were condemned to focus only on sensuality, we had violent explosions of poetry. Writing erotica became a road to sainthood rather than to debauchery.
When I don't have a story to tell, I'm a terror to live with.
The real test of a musician is live performance. It's one thing to spend a long time learning how to play well in the studio, but to do it in front of people is what keeps me coming back to touring.
Poetry is like making a joke. If you get one word wrong at the end of a joke, you've lost the whole thing.
I put down the camera long ago, you know? I was here in London, aged 19, and I was obsessed with my camera, shooting everything I could. Then someone stole it. It helped me to see things for the first time.
But there's no way round it-commercial success is a mark of failure for a graffiti artist. We're not supposed to be embraced in that way. When you look at how society rewards so many of the wrong people, it's hard not to view financial reimbursement as a badge of self-serving mediocrity.
Movies become living organisms that graduate from a filmmaker's sphere of influence and pretty much look back and tell you how they need to be said goodbye to. A movie often turns around and looks at you and says, "Here is who I am, and that's maybe now how you see me, but that's who I've become." And you've got to be open enough to go with that.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.