Journey to Love (1955), Asphodel, That Greeny Flower
“It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack”
'of what is found there.'
Journey to Love (1955), Asphodel, That Greeny Flower
Source: Asphodel, That Greeny Flower and Other Love Poems: That Greeny Flower
“It is difficult to get a hearing from busy men for even a great new truth.”
[408247, October 1927, Listerian Oration: 1927 (delivered at the annual meeting of the Canadian Medical Association, Toronto, June 18, 1927), Canadian Medical Association Journal, 17, 10 Pt 2, 1255–1263, 20316567, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC408247/] quote from p. 1261; This oration sponsored by the Lister Club of the Canadian Medical Association should not be confused with the Lister Oration sponsored by the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
“Inspiration comes within a framework. A poem that gets out of hand is not a poem.”
“The one great poem of New England is her Sunday.”
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit (1887)
“If you read quickly to get through a poem to what it means, you have missed the body of the poem.”
Cornell Chronicle interview (1999)
The Paris Review interview
Context: Poems get to the point where they are stronger than you are. They come up from some other depth and they find a place on the page. You can never find that depth again, that same kind of authority and voice. I might feel I would like to change something about them, but they’re still stronger than I am and I cannot.
“Town Mouse, Country Mouse”, p. 70
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)
