Statement on poetics in The New American Poetry (1960) edited by Donald Allen
Context: I long for poems of an inner harmony in utter contrast to the chaos in which they exist. Insofar as poetry has a social function it is to awaken sleepers by other means than shock.
introduction-John Hollander ed.'Committed to Memory' Riverhead Books New York 1996
“I believe the common denominator of the Universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility and murder.”
"Grizzly Man" (2006)
Session 337, Page 16
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 8
The Poetic Principle (1850)
“There is a vivid contrast between the order of China and the chaos of the West.”
Source: As quoted in The East Is Rising': Xi Maps Out China’s Post-Covid Ascent https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/03/world/asia/xi-china-congress.html The New York Times
“My life has been the poem I would have writ,
But I could not both live and utter it.”
My Life Has Been a Poem I Would Have Writ
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Friday
“The poem, a harmonious flow of nuances, demands a musical rhythm, Vers libre.”
Contemporary French Poetry, The Poetry Review, 1914
“The very impulse to write springs from an inner chaos crying for order - for meaning.”
