Poetry seems to be the only weapon able to beat language, using language's own means.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that poetry has a unique power to transcend regular language using its own tools.
Joseph Brodsky emphasizes the distinctive nature of poetry as a form of expression that can effectively engage with and even surpass the limitations of everyday language. He asserts that poetry, through its artistic use of language, has the ability to convey deeper meanings and emotions that ordinary discourse often fails to articulate.
In practice
During a poetry reading, you might use this quote to highlight the transformative power of spoken word.
Basically, it's hard for me to assess myself, a hardship not only prompted by the immodesty of the enterprise, but because one is not capable of assessing himself, let alone his work. However, if I were to summarize, my main interest is the nature of time. That's what interests me most of all. What time can do to a man.
One always pulls the trigger out of self-interest and quotes history to avoid responsibility or pangs of conscience.
On the whole, infinity is a fairly palpable aspect of this business of publishing, if only because it extends a dead author's existence beyond the limits he envisioned, or provides a living author with a future he cannot measure. In other words, this business deals with the future which we all prefer to regard as unending.
The invention of ethical and political doctrines, which blossomed into our own social sciences, is a product of times when things appeared manageable. The same goes for the criticism of those doctrines, though as a voice from the past, this criticism proved prophetic.
Try not to pay attention to those who will try to make life miserable for you. There will be a lot of those - in the official capacity as well as the self-appointed.
To put it in plain language, Russia is that country where the name of a writer appears not on the cover of his book, but on the door of his prison cell.
I believe that a good children's book should appeal to all people who have not completely lost their original joy and wonder in life. The fact is that I don't make books for children at all. I make them for that part of us, of myself and of my friends, which has never changed, which is still a child.
Oh literature, oh the glorious Art, how it preys upon the marrow in our bones. It scoops the stuffing out of us, and chucks us aside. Alas!
As an artist, I want to interpret my feelings - not run across the street and ask what my mother thinks.
I respect most boxers because they're violent people who learned to discipline themselves ... a good boxer is an artist ... Boxing is existential - some fights are better than others.
And I may often question choices I make as a producer. But I've never questioned the choices I make as a director.
To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.
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