“How are his poems?"
"He's not as good as he thinks he is, but then most of us feel that way.”

Source: Hollywood

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Charles Bukowski555

American writer 1920–1994

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

"Answers to Questions," from Mid-Century American Poets, edited by John Ciardi, 1950 [p. 171]
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

“It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound—that he will never get over it.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

General sources
Source: "The Poetry of Amy Lowell" in The Christian Science Monitor (16 May 1925)

“Tennyson follows his feelings in creating each line. He follows the music in his head. If you had asked him, at the end of the day, to describe the prosody of the poem to you, he would no doubt have had to think for a moment before he could answer you, not because he was ignorant of the terms, but because he had been writing a poem, not a metrical exercise. At every point, he was exerting his free will. And the outcome of that exertion was the form.”

James Fenton (1949) poet

Source: An Introduction to English Poetry (2002), Ch. 4: The Sense of Form (pp. 24-25)

“The characteristic poetic strategy of our time—refine your singularities—is something Auden has not learned; so his best poems are very peculiarly good, nearly the most interesting poems of our time. When he writes badly, we can afford to be angry at him, and he can afford to laugh at us.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“Poetry in a Dry Season”, p. 37
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

“He [God] lends us a little of His reasoning powers and that is how we think: He puts a little of His love into us and that is how we love one another.”

Clive Staples Lewis book Mere Christianity

Book II, Chapter 4, "The Perfect Penitent"
Mere Christianity (1952)
Context: He [God] lends us a little of His reasoning powers and that is how we think: He puts a little of His love into us and that is how we love one another. When you teach a child writing, you hold its hand while it forms the letters: that is, it forms the letters because you are forming them. We love and reason because God loves and reasons and holds our hand while we do it.

“Music was his life, it was not his livelihood,
And it made him feel so happy and it made him feel so good.
And he sang from his heart and he sang from his soul.
He did not know how well he sang; It just made him whole.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

Mr. Tanner
Song lyrics, Short Stories (1974)

“When a person tells others “Be good”, he conveys to his hearers the feeling that he is good and they are not.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

"How to Love God" (12 September 1954) http://www.avatarmeherbaba.org/erics/lovegod.html  <br class="br">General sources <br class="br">Context: When a person tells others “Be good”, he conveys to his hearers the feeling that he is good and they are not. When he says “Be brave, honest and pure”, he conveys to his hearers the feeling that the speaker himself is all that, while they are cowards, dishonest and unclean.<br>To love God in the most practical way is to love our fellow beings. If we feel for others in the same way as we feel for our own dear ones, we love God.<br>If, instead of seeing faults in others we look within ourselves we are loving God.