A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that true creativity and poetic expression are rooted in the wonder and innocence of childhood.
H. L. Mencken's quote reflects the idea that a poet's ability to perceive and express the world creatively is closely tied to a childlike perspective. As one matures, the purity and spontaneity of that view can be lost, making a poet over thirty seem like a child trapped in an adult's body, still yearning for that imaginative freedom and simplicity.
In practice
This quote could be used in a poetry workshop to inspire participants to embrace their childlike creativity.
I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already acquired independently-and not infrequently the determination was made clumsily and inaccurately.
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
My only problem with fans is when they turn pro. For example, when all the professional writers were fired by DC in the '60s, they brought in a generation of comic book fans who would have paid to have written these stories.
I try to remember that the job - as well as the plight, and the unexpected joy - of the artist is to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and honed by it.
I'm lucky enough to be able to make films and so I don't need a psychiatrist. I can sort out my fears and all those things with my work. That's an enormous privilege. That's the privilege of all artists, to be able to sort out their unhappiness and their neuroses in order to create something.
Intolerance respecting other people's religion is toleration itself in comparison with intolerance respecting other people's art.
Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. And his hope for other people is that they will also make it exist by observing it. I call it 'creative observation.' Creative viewing.
Imagination helps the realism of every detail, and only sees the beauties of the work.
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