“Poetry is a sort of homecoming.”

—  Paul Celan

Last update April 28, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Poetry is a sort of homecoming." by Paul Celan?
Paul Celan photo
Paul Celan 13
Romanian poet and translator 1920–1970

Related quotes

Marianne Moore photo

“Hebrew poetry is,
prose with a sort of heightened consciousness' Ecstasy
affords
the occasion expediency, determines the form”

Marianne Moore (1887–1972) American poet and writer

The Past is the Present
Collected Poems (1951)

Michael Oakeshott photo

“Poetry is a sort of truancy, a dream within the dream of life, a wild flower planted among our wheat.”

Michael Oakeshott (1901–1990) British philosopher

Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (1962)

Daljit Nagra photo

“I chose to rewrite it in poetry because the original Ramayana was in poetry- the fact is, it’s sort of been corrupted into prose. In its original form it was an epic poem rather like the Iliad or works of that sort. Rather than traditional poetry, it was a verse novel, without a traditional structure. What I most wanted to do was to preserve the essential musicality of the lines. Especially as the Ramayana like so many stories, was based on a fundamentally oral tradition.”

Daljit Nagra (1966) British poet, teacher and broadcaster

On reworking the Ramayana in “An Interview With Daljit Nagra” https://www.thebubble.org.uk/culture/literature/an-interview-with-daljit-nagra/ in The Bubble (2014 Sept 17)

Stephen Sondheim photo

“One difference between poetry and lyrics is that lyrics sort of fade into the background. They fade on the page and live on the stage when set to music.”

Stephen Sondheim (1930) American composer and lyricist
H.P. Lovecraft photo

“I am a student of life, and don't want to miss any experience. There's poetry in this sort of thing, you know--or perhaps you don't know, but it's all the same.”

H.P. Lovecraft book Old Bugs

Source: Old Bugs

“I'd read SF steadily from when I was eleven until I started college. When I started college I said, "I'm not going to read that while I'm here, I'm going to learn poetry and other things of that sort" in fact I wrote a lot of poetry then.”

Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) American speculative fiction writer

Phlogiston interview (1995)
Context: Well, I decided that as a teenager that I really didn't know enough to describe character well and I was wasting my time. I'd learned as much as I could about story telling techniques and it wasn't a matter of technique any more. It was a matter of substance. As a result I said I was going to wait until I was a lot older and had more experience. So it was that after I got out of college I'd been away from SF for about four years. I'd read SF steadily from when I was eleven until I started college. When I started college I said, "I'm not going to read that while I'm here, I'm going to learn poetry and other things of that sort" in fact I wrote a lot of poetry then.

Richard Blackmore photo

“Tis in the power of Poetry to insinuate into the inmost Recesses of the Mind, to touch any Spring that moves the Heart, to agitate the Soul with any sort of Affection, and transform it into any Shape or Posture it thinks fit.”

Richard Blackmore (1654–1729) English poet and physician

Preface to Prince Arthur (1695)

Henry David Thoreau photo

“Poetry — No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

January 26, 1840
Journals (1838-1859)
Context: Poetry — No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself. The most accurate analysis by the rarest wisdom is yet insufficient, and the poet will instantly prove it false by setting aside its requisitions. It is indeed all that we do not know. The poet does not need to see how meadows are something else than earth, grass, and water, but how they are thus much. He does not need discover that potato blows are as beautiful as violets, as the farmer thinks, but only how good potato blows are. The poem is drawn out from under the feet of the poet, his whole weight has rested on this ground. It has a logic more severe than the logician's. You might as well think to go in pursuit of the rainbow, and embrace it on the next hill, as to embrace the whole of poetry even in thought.

Georges Braque photo

“I would say that it was 'poetry' which distinguishes the cubist paintings which Picasso and I arrived at intuitively from the lifeless sort of painting which those who followed us tried, with such unfortunate results, to arrive at theoretically.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

1946 - 1963, interview with John Richardson' (1957)

Frederik Pohl photo

“Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time—’

That’s the sort of thing she would have written before the rise of advertising. The correlation is perfectly clear. Advertising up, lyric poetry down.”

Frederik Pohl book The Space Merchants

Source: The Space Merchants (1953), Chapter 4 (p. 48)

Related topics