Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
W. H. AudenRead
A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.
Interpretation
A poet creates language that is crafted with care and intention.
W. H. Auden's quote highlights the artistry involved in poetry, suggesting that poets are skilled creators who construct meaningful and impactful expressions through words. This emphasizes the idea that poetry is not merely about writing but about the careful crafting of language to evoke feelings, imagery, and thoughts in a structured form.
In practice
During a workshop on creative writing, I shared this quote to inspire budding poets to see their craft as a profession.
Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
That the speech of self-disclosure should be translatable seems to me very odd, but I am convinced that it is. The conclusion that I draw is that the only quality which all human being without exception possess is uniqueness: any characteristic, on the other hand, which one individual can be recognized as having in common with another, like red hair or the English language, implies the existence of other individual qualities which this classification excludes.
Nobody knows what the cause is, though some pretend they do; it like some hidden assassin waiting to strike at you. Childless women get it, and men when they retire; it as if there had to be some outlet for their foiled creative fire.
History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.
Music is the best means we have of digesting time.
'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'
Photography helps people to see.
And then there came the pounding of another drum, as if another giant were coming yards behind him, and each giant, intent on his own drum, gave no notice to the rhythm of the other. The sound grew louder and louder until it seemed to fill not just my hearing but all my senses, to be throbbing in my lips and fingers, in the flesh of my temples, in my veins.
Overhead, the two moons worked together to bathe the world in a strange light.
If you are going to write, say, fantasy - stop reading fantasy. You've already read too much. Read other things; read westerns, read history, read anything that seems interesting, because if you only read fantasy and then you start to write fantasy, all you're going to do is recycle the same old stuff and move it around a bit.
I am not trying to be a historian and a dramatist; I'm a dramatist, a dramatic historian, or one who does a dramatic interpretation of history.
Beauty is a fruit which we look at without trying to seize it.
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