A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.
Interpretation
Poets illuminate truths and provoke thought, challenging the status quo.
This quote by Salman Rushdie emphasizes the role of a poet as a crucial figure in society, tasked with articulating the inexpressible and confronting untruths. By engaging in arguments and sparking discussions, poets not only reflect the world but also influence its direction, urging people to remain awake and aware rather than complacent.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of literature, one might quote this to illustrate the power of poetry.
I've been fascinated by Machiavelli since I was very young. I've always felt that he had a bad rap from history, and that he was actually a person quite unlike what we now think of as Machiavellian. He was a republican. He disliked totalitarian government.
Killing people because you don't like their ideas - it's a bad thing.
faith without doubt is addiction
I am clearly vulnerable to these more passionate and volatile unstable relationships. I am trying to not be so vulnerable.
In India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion intervenes, mere innocence is no excuse. Yet we go on skating around this issue, speaking of religion in the fashionable language of 'respect.' What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around the world in religion's dreaded name?
Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.
Artists are meant to be madmen, to disturb and shock us.
Composers and musicians have always starved and, as this is a sentimental country, we think the tradition should be continued.
One of the most satisfying aspects of writing is that it can open in us deep wells of hidden treasures that are beautiful for us as well as for others to see.
Things men have made with wakened hands, and put soft life into are awake through years with transferred touch, and go on glowing for long years. And for this reason, some old things are lovely warm still with the life of forgotten men who made them.
My directors of photography light my films, but the colours of the sets, furnishings, clothes, hairstyles - that's me. Everything that's in front of the camera, I bring you.
Asking an artist to talk about his work is like asking a plant to discuss horticulture.
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