Sunday, April 08, 2012

From "Hurrah for Euphony"

"Conjured from eye, ear, and intellect, words are best when they push and jostle, sharpen wit, condense wisdom."

"The task is to thread the labyrinth, rattle the Minotaur of truth."

"Condense everything into a ball, and throw it."

"Walt and Emily are the twin fonts of American poetry. And Protestants, like our founders, in the sense of protest against status quo — both grounded in scripture but bound for rapture. They redefined the world around them, Walt wanting to create a voice for the Nation, and Emily hugging inner horizon."

"Don’t worry, if you read, books will find you."

"Another path is to simply see as much as possible, be sentinel for incidence."

"Perhaps our beginning was the painter Degas remarking to Mallarmé he’d always wanted to write a poem, but could never get an idea for one. Mallarmé’s answer was “Poems, my dear Degas, are not made out of ideas, they are made with words.” I would add, yes, but ideas are their armature, the unseen engine, what makes the merry-go-round go round. Learn to use words first — later you’ll have ideas."

"I believe in form and make up my own rules."

"Olson warned against adjectives as leaking energy from matters at hand, and on the whole he is right — distrust anything which impedes the flow."

"Blake insisted all art, visual or verbal, should have a “wiry bounding line.” He said we should take an abstract and give it form and human sinew, voice. He believed the perfect world was the imagination. You have only to connect with it, the more you see, the more you can, led to another Eden."



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5 comments:

GSK+ said...

SO glad yer back at werke, I'd given up checking, just had an impulse this AM ---
Greek Philosphy led us down the garden-path of adjectives-as-protean-nouns....& no one can believe in adverbs...May Be we can keep adjectives if we treat them more like verbs (also thereby easing-out adverbs):?

GSK+ said...

Sober 2nd thoughts:
"Poems are made out of words" -- indeed. & Prose is made out of sentences. The question remains, how long our sentences, & with what degree of labour must we serve them?
In harmony with the getting-older middling of my brow (eg, rediscovering Steinbeck), perhaps one might give some slack to The Ordinaries & let adjectives & adverbs pass by as the similies & metaphors of the masses....?

GSK+ said...

Just taking a moment to say again how value-able your rehabilitation of Olson's rehabilitation of the Sophists was/is to me, Thanks again!

Jeff Wild said...

I am glad, though it was really the work of the philosopher Gary Madison, who explained to me the importance of the Sophist perspective.

Jeff Wild said...

G - have you checked out the full link in the title? You might like that as well.