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.'
You finish a film not in the editing, but in the conversations that audiences have with themselves - and in that sense, every viewer is making a slightly different film. And that's wonderful.
[Six principles that make for a good story:] 1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of a political-social-economic nature; 2. total objectivity; 3. truthful descriptions of persons and objects; 4. extreme brevity; 5. audacity and originality: flee the stereotype; 6. compassion.
Ballet is the fairies' baseball.
The beauty of the band was you never knew what was going to come out next.
When you write a song, it may come from a personal space, but it very seldom actually represents you. It comes out of a sort of mood of melancholy, somehow. It's almost theatrical.
Acting... was the biggest charge I ever had. What other artist has it so good? Approval so quick?
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