“Poetries are no more pure and simple than human histories are pure and simple. And there are colonised poetics and resilient poetics, transmissions across frontiers not easily traced.”
"Legislators of the world" in The Guardian (18 November 2006) http://books.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1950812,00.html
Context: I'm both a poet and one of the "everybodies" of my country. I live with manipulated fear, ignorance, cultural confusion and social antagonism huddling together on the faultline of an empire. I hope never to idealise poetry — it has suffered enough from that. Poetry is not a healing lotion, an emotional massage, a kind of linguistic aromatherapy. Neither is it a blueprint, nor an instruction manual, nor a billboard. There is no universal Poetry, anyway, only poetries and poetics, and the streaming, intertwining histories to which they belong. There is room, indeed necessity, for both Neruda and César Valléjo, for Pier Paolo Pasolini and Alfonsina Storni, for both Ezra Pound and Nelly Sachs. Poetries are no more pure and simple than human histories are pure and simple. And there are colonised poetics and resilient poetics, transmissions across frontiers not easily traced.
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Adrienne Rich 51
American poet, essayist and feminist 1929–2012Related quotes
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
Context: Jack: That, my dear Algy, is the whole truth pure and simple.
Algernon: The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!
Act I
Often quoted as "The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple."
“It’s magnificent, it’s really great. It is quite simple and quite a pure piece.”
Israeli sky in Anish’s steel- India-born artist sculpts landmark symbol for museum
Catullus (p. 28)
More Classics Revisited (1989)
Attributed to Selznick in: Kobi Yamada, Dan Zadra, Steve Potter (2003), Everyone Leads,
“Hence the love of God in the pure and simple soul is almost continually in act.”
The Sayings of Light and Love
Context: Souls will be unable to reach perfection who do not strive to be content with having nothing, in such fashion that their natural and spiritual desire is satisfied with emptiness; for this is necessary in order to reach the highest tranquility and peace of spirit. Hence the love of God in the pure and simple soul is almost continually in act.
“The demolition derby is, pure and simple, a form of gladiatorial combat for our times.”
"Clean Fun at Riverhead"
The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (1965)
Source: A machine that learns (1951), p. 63.
"Legislators of the world" in The Guardian (18 November 2006) http://books.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1950812,00.html
Context: I'm both a poet and one of the "everybodies" of my country. I live with manipulated fear, ignorance, cultural confusion and social antagonism huddling together on the faultline of an empire. I hope never to idealise poetry — it has suffered enough from that. Poetry is not a healing lotion, an emotional massage, a kind of linguistic aromatherapy. Neither is it a blueprint, nor an instruction manual, nor a billboard. There is no universal Poetry, anyway, only poetries and poetics, and the streaming, intertwining histories to which they belong. There is room, indeed necessity, for both Neruda and César Valléjo, for Pier Paolo Pasolini and Alfonsina Storni, for both Ezra Pound and Nelly Sachs. Poetries are no more pure and simple than human histories are pure and simple. And there are colonised poetics and resilient poetics, transmissions across frontiers not easily traced.
Review of Small Change, from When The Lights Go Down (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980, ISBN 0-030-42511-5).