To me, poetry is somebody standing up, so to speak, and saying, with as little concealment as possible, what it is for him or her to be on earth at this moment
Interpretation
Poetry serves as a personal expression of one's existence and experiences in the present moment.
In this quote, Galway Kinnell emphasizes the essence of poetry as an authentic and unguarded declaration of one’s individual perspective on life at a specific time. He suggests that poets convey their deepest feelings and observations about their existence, bringing a sense of immediacy and personal truth to their work, which resonates with the human experience.
In practice
A poet sharing their latest work in a literary gathering.
When I sleepwalk into your room, and pick you up, and hold you up in the moonlight, you cling to me hard, as if clinging could save us. I think you think I will never die, I think I exude to you the permanence of smoke or stars, even as my broken arms heal themselves around you.
Turn on the dream you lived through the unwavering gaze. It is as you thought: the living burn. In the floating days may you discover grace.
Little sleep's-head sprouting hair in the moonlight, when I come back we will go out together, we will walk out together among, the ten thousand things, each scratched too late with such knowledge, the wages of dying is love.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again, their memories are what give them the need for other hands. And the desolation of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness carved out of such tiny beings as we are asks to be filled; the need for the new love is faithfulness to the old.
If poetry does not come as naturally as leaves to a tree,_x000D_ _x000D_ then it better not come at all.
My goal as a creative person is to express truth and beauty in whatever I do
I sometimes think there is nothing so delightful as drawing.
Low budgets force you to be more creative. Sometimes, with too much money, time and equipment, you can over-think. My way, you can use your gut instinct.
I can't understand these chaps who go round American universities explaining how they write poems: It's like going round explaining how you sleep with your wife.
I dreamed of Crusades, voyages of discovery that nobody had heard of, republics without histories, religious wars stamped out, revolutions in morals, movements of races and continents; I used to believe in every kind of magic. I began it as an investigation. I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.
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