
“The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes…”
Source: Cakes and Ale: Or, The Skeleton in the Cupboard (1930), p. 184
Landing a Man on the Earth Without the Help of Norman Mailer
Woodstock Nation (1969)
“The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes…”
Source: Cakes and Ale: Or, The Skeleton in the Cupboard (1930), p. 184
“I am a warrior, so that my son may be a merchant, so that his son may be a poet.”
“A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.”
"The Distracted Public" (1990), p. 167
It All Adds Up (1994)
Context: Writers, poets, painters, musicians, philosophers, political thinkers, to name only a few of the categories affected, must woo their readers, viewers, listeners, from distraction. To this we must add, for simple realism demands it, that these same writers, painters, etc., are themselves the children of distraction. As such, they are peculiarly qualified to approach the distracted multitudes. They will have experienced the seductions as well as the destructiveness of the forces we have been considering here. This is the destructive element in which we do not need to be summoned to immerse ourselves, for we were born to it.
“writers without books, poets without verses, painters without pictures p198”
“I said "writer," not "poet;" I did have some common sense.”
On Writing Poetry (1995)
Context: My English teacher from 1955, run to ground by some documentary crew trying to explain my life, said that in her class I had showed no particular promise. This was true. Until the descent of the giant thumb, I showed no particular promise. I also showed no particular promise for some time afterwards, but I did not know this. A lot of being a poet consists of willed ignorance. If you woke up from your trance and realized the nature of the life-threatening and dignity-destroying precipice you were walking along, you would switch into actuarial sciences immediately. If I had not been ignorant in this particular way, I would not have announced to an assortment of my high school female friends, in the cafeteria one brown-bag lunchtime, that I was going to be a writer. I said "writer," not "poet;" I did have some common sense. But my announcement was certainly a conversation-stopper. Sticks of celery were suspended in mid-crunch, peanut-butter sandwiches paused halfway between table and mouth; nobody said a word. One of those present reminded me of this incident recently — I had repressed it — and said she had been simply astounded. "Why?," I said. "Because I wanted to be a writer?" "No," she said. "Because you had the guts to say it out loud."
“Poverty was scorned,
Fruitful of warriors; and from all the world
Came that which ruins nations.”
Fecunda virorum
paupertas fugitur totoque accersitur orbe
quo gens quaeque perit.
Book I, line 165 (tr. Edward Ridley).
Pharsalia
“The player envies only the player, the poet envies only the poet.”
"On Envy"
The Plain Speaker (1826)
“The prose writer drags meaning along with a rope, the poet makes it stand out and hit you.”
Speculations (Essays, 1924)