The Journal of My Other Self
The Poet (1830)
Context: The poet in a golden clime was born,
With golden stars above;
Dower'd with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,
The love of love.
He saw thro' life and death, thro' good and ill,
He saw thro' his own soul.
The marvel of the everlasting will,
An open scroll,
Before him lay; with echoing feet he threaded
The secretest walks of fame:
The viewless arrows of his thoughts were headed
And wing'd with flame,
Like Indian reeds blown from his silver tongue...
On starting off in poetry (as quoted in the book “Race and the Modern Artist” https://books.google.com/books?id=4XY8DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA208&lpg=PA208&dq)
“The poet is in exile whether he is or he is not.”
Paris Review interview (1986)
Context: I always had this feeling — I’ve heard other Jews say — that when you can’t find any other explanation for Jews, you say, “Well, they are poets.” There are a great many similarities. This is a theme running all through my stuff from the very beginning. The poet is in exile whether he is or he is not. Because of what everybody knows about society’s idea of the artist as a peripheral character and a potential bum. Or troublemaker. Well, the Jews began their career of troublemaking by inventing the God whom Wallace Stevens considers the ultimate poetic idea. And so I always thought of myself as being both in and out of society at the same time. Like the way most artists probably feel in order to survive — you have to at least pretend that you are “seriously” in the world. Or actually perform in it while you know that in your own soul you are not in it at all. You are outside observing it.
Carol Ness, "Beat Poet Gregory Corso, 70, Dies of Cancer" http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/01/18/MN143830.DTL, San Francisco Chronicle, 2001-01-18. : On Gregory Corso.
2000s
“A poet must have died as a man before he is worth anything as a poet”
National Book Award Acceptance Speech (1957)
Context: When a poet is being a poet — that is, when he is writing or thinking about writing — he cannot be concerned with anything but the making of a poem. If the poem is to turn out well, the poet cannot have thought of whether it will be saleable, or of what its effect on the world should be; he cannot think of whether it will bring him honor, or advance a cause, or comfort someone in sorrow. All such considerations, whether silly or generous, would be merely intrusive; for, psychologically speaking, the end of writing is the poem itself.
