Poetry is not a civilizer, rather the reverse, for great poetry appeals to the most primitive instincts.
Interpretation
Great poetry evokes our most basic emotions rather than refining us.
Robinson Jeffers suggests that poetry, rather than serving to civilize or improve society, actually reaches down to our most fundamental and primitive instincts. In this view, poetry is a powerful force that resonates with raw human emotion, potentially revealing our true, unrefined selves rather than elevating us to a more civilized state.
In practice
In a discussion about the impact of art on human nature, this quote can illustrate how poetry connects with our base emotions.
As for me, I would rather be a worm in a wild apple than a son of man. But we are what we are, and we might remember not to hate any person, for all are vicious; And not to be astonished at any evil, all are deserved; And not to fear death; it is the only way to be cleansed.
Nature knows that people are a tide that swells and in time will ebb, and all their works dissolve ... As for us: We must uncenter our minds from ourselves. We must unhumanize our views a little and become confident as the rock and ocean that we are made from.
Does it matter whether you hate yourself? At least love your eyes that can see, your mind that can hear the music, the thunder of the wings.
I've changed my ways a little, I cannot now Run with you in the evenings along the shore, Except in a kind of dream, and you, if you dream a moment, You see me there.
You making haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains: shine, perishing republic.
Death's a fierce meadowlark: but to die having made / Something more equal to the centuries / Than muscle and bone, is mostly to shed weakness.
The meaning of song goes deep. Who in logical words can explain the effect music has on us? A kind of inarticulate, unfathomable speech, which leads us to the edge of the infinite, and lets us for a moment gaze into that!
We favor the simple expression of the complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth.
Invention presupposes imagination but should not be confused with it.
The importance of poetry is not measured, finally, by what the poet says but by how he says it.
It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else.
I always thought that poetry is the verdict that others give to a certain kind of writing. So to call yourself a poet is a kind of dangerous description. It's for others; it's for others to use.
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