For me, there is a paradox in poetry, which is like the paradox in tragedy. You have the most terrible subject, but it's in a form that is so sensually gratifying that it connects the surviving heart to the despairing intellect.
Tony HarrisonRead
I hate being called poet/dramatist/translator/director. 'Poet' covers it all for me.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The term 'poet' encompasses all aspects of Tony Harrison's creative identity.
In this quote, Tony Harrison expresses a preference for the term 'poet' over other labels like dramatist, translator, or director. He believes that the essence of his work as a poet inherently includes the skills and creativity required in these other roles, thus making the broader label more fitting.
Themes
PoetArtIdentityCreativityExpression
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of artistic roles, one might quote Harrison to emphasize the unifying power of poetry.
More from Tony Harrison
All quotes βTheatre has to be theatrical. It has to draw attention to itself, like poetry.
Tony HarrisonRead
There's a kind of despair about whether art can really do anything, but you have to incorporate that despair into the way you work. I try to soak my work in my sense of futility and fury.
Tony HarrisonRead
Similar quotes
If you write a letter of resignation or something with an agenda, you're simply using a pen to record what you have thought out. In a poem, the pen is more like a flashlight, a Geiger counter, or one of those metal detectors that people walk around beaches with.
Billy CollinsRead
The inmost spirit of poetry, in other words, is at bottom, in every recorded case, the voice of pain β and the physical body, so to speak, of poetry, is the treatment by which the poet tries to reconcile that pain with the world.
Ted HughesRead
Something in me was responding now as the audience responded, not in fear, but in some human way, to the magic of that fragile painted set, the mystery of the lighted world there.
Anne RiceRead
Painting what I experience, translating what I feel, is like a great liberation. But it is also work, self-examination, consciousness, criticism, struggle.
BalthusRead
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.
Terry PratchettRead
There are no poetic ideas; only poetic utterances.
Evelyn WaughRead