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.
Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who can't attain it in anything.
I'm not a wildly gifted person; I don't play an instrument or speak another language or have great accomplishments in another field, as many writers do. But writing feels natural to me; the act of it seems to free up my unconscious, so that sometimes I feel that I have access to more ideas and information than my conscious mind could think up.
There is something bigger than fact: the underlying spirit, all it stands for, the mood, the vastness, the wildness.
I believe that dance is the oldest, noblest and most cogent of the arts. I believe that dance is the most perfect symbol of the activity of God and His angels. I believe that dance has the power to heal, mentally and physically. I believe that true education in the art of dance is education of the whole man.
I would never, ever use a novel to do thinly disguised political information dissemination. For me, all these experiences, they sat in me, and they got broken down into my body, and I sweated it out. It's not because I want to talk about 'issues.' For me, a novel is a way of seeing the world.
I don't remember not dancing. When I realized I was alive and these were my parents, and I could walk and talk, I could dance.
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