Belief in one's identity as a poet or writer prior to the acid test of publication is as naive and harmless as the youthful belief in one's immortality... and the inevitable disillusionment is just as painful.
Dan SimmonsRead
Poetry is only secondarily about words. Primarily, it is about truth. I dealt with the Ding an Sich, the substance behind the shadow, weaving powerful concepts, similes, and connections the way an engineer would raise a skyscraper with the whiskered-alloy skeleton being constructed long before the glass and plastic and chromaluminum appears.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Poetry transcends mere words by conveying deeper truths and concepts.
In this quote, Dan Simmons emphasizes that the essence of poetry lies not solely in the words chosen, but in the underlying truths and ideas they express. He compares the construction of poetry to engineering, suggesting that just as a skyscraper is built upon a solid framework before its exterior is added, poetry is crafted through the exploration of profound concepts that drive the piece long before the final word is written.
Themes
PoetryTruthArtWordsMeaning
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a literary lecture to explore the deeper meanings of poetry.
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Words bend our thinking to infinite paths of self-delusion, and the fact that we spend most of our mental lives in brain mansions built of words means that we lack the objectivity necessary to see the terrible distortion of reality which language brings.
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I now understand the need for faith - pure, blind, fly-in-the-face-of-reason faith - as a small life preserver in the wild and endless sea of a universe ruled by unfeeling laws and totally indifferent to the small, reasoning beings that inhabit it.
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